Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Adventure
by Stainless Steel Fox
Summary: Gadget Hackwrench is transported to another world where a rather different team of Rescue Rangers fight their battle against crime and villany. Their Gadget has been kidnapped by Nimnul, and only she can save them, and the world, from a dreadful fate...
1. Chapter 1

**Notes: **Originally a post by post RP on the RRRPG board, run by me (Stainless Steel Rat) for Ronnie Rabbit, who was playing Gadget. Kudos to him, he's done a great job! The wording has been altered in places to convert it to a consistent story format. It is a side story to the main RRRPG thread, and refers to events in it.

The Treehouse was under threat at one point, and they managed to finesse the city into moving it from Central Park to the UN Peace garden (it assumes the Ranger's home city was New York). Also, Gadget had built a large underground workshop under a junkyard in the Morningside area. There a submarine, the Sea Ranger is under construction, using a stainless steel swing top bin, two bread bins, a tupperware box, and a Seadoo with it's battery replaced bya Quantum Electron Cascade Generator (Nimnul's cat-powered generator, without the cats).

**Part 1 - Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Arrival**

Gadget came to lying slumped on a floor. Her vision was a bit muzzy, and she didn't feel like moving yet. There were a number of lit candle stubs in her field of vision, and a strange incense smell in the air, but the room beyond was dim. She could see a number of shapes and clearly hear a voice.

"... but she's a girl!" The first voice was an alto, sassy and declarative.

It was answered by a deep rich bass voice, across between Partick Steward and James Earl Jones. "Sweetie, Chip asked me to summon an alternate version of Gadget who'd have the skills to do the job, and who wouldn't imperil anyone if they disappeared for a few moments. I didn't put other paramenters into the spell. You need to be more flexible."

There was a giggle in the first voice. "I'll show you 'flexible' or rather Elasti-Kate will, tonight."

A voice like wind chimes broke in. "Uh guys, you realise she'd conscious?"

"Yes, Speedie, and what she must think of us..." This voice was quite similar to Gadget's own in pitch and tone.

"Too roight! Well mates, we hav'ta apologise." The voice sounded Australian and was another female.

The similar voice spoke. "Just what I was thinking... Do we still need the lights down?"

A figure stepped between the candles as the room lightened, as if a large curtain being pulled back. Daylight streamed in.

The figure was a female chipmunk with blonde curly hair. She wore a fedora, a green skintight crop top, and short khaki combat pants. In one pocket was a slingshot, and in the other a magnifying glass, from the outline. She offered a paw.

"Charlotte Maplewood, but call me Chip. Whenever anyone uses my full name I feel like a darned dessert. I'm really sorry about all this, but the fate of the world truly hangs in the balance, and only you can save it."

"Gee, so no pressure!" the alto chipped in.

This turned out to be a redheaded chipmunk girl with a pig tail and matching nose, red that is, not pig-like. Perched on the aforementioned nose was a pair of circular wire frame glasses. She was wearing a yellow bikini top and dark red hot pants and was snuggled into the wing of a male bat, wearing a bow tie and nothing else. His other wing was holding a scrubbing brush staff.

The red head spoke. "Della 'Del' Oakmont, resident computer geek, secret superhero, and master of disguise."

The big bat added. "Also master of dis-guys heart. I'm Foxglove, ex-evil henchbat. Now I use my magic for truth, justice... and tomato ketchup flavoured ice cream."

The other two voices turned out to be a shapely blue fly in what looked like a red leotard, who was sitting on the shoulder of an older, rather matronly mouse who looked a lot like a young version of Camenbert Kate.

The fly zipped forward. "Speedie, at your service."

"Madison Wisconsin Colby's me name, and adventurin's me game. Maddy to me pals." The big mouse stepped forward and held out a paw. "And I 'ope you'll count yerself as one."

Chip was looking straight into Gadget's eyes. "You recognise us, but you still look surprised. Could it be that it's not just you... in your universe we, our analogues that is, are the opposite gender to what we are here?"

Gadget felt an overwhelming urge to say "...oh, boy," so she did.

She took the offered hand up, her usual curiosity and friendliness quickly kicking in, and overtaking her puzzlement and disconcertion.

"Hi! My name's Gad - um, it's fairly self evident you know the rest," she said, quickly stopping herself. "And, well actually, yes, it seems like everyone's gender is reversed, although of course this is too small a representative sample of the world at large to be sure. Hmm, some kind of DNA mutation, theoretically it would be a fairly minor alteration to protein composition to make XX and XY chromosomes express the alternate gender-" she speculated thoughtfully. "Then everything else in the world could be exactly the same, down to the last atom! That would explain the otherwise remarkable similarities."

Chip's face split in a broad grin. "You really are Gadget... my, this is odd."

She looked around curiously. "Well, the voice that sounds like me is Chip, and I don't see myself - or not myself, but rather, some male version of myself - so I assume he's gone missing, and that's why you need me?" she queried. "Golly, wouldn't it have been easier to just get Spark... Sparkie to do anything technical you need, rather than get me from a whole other dimension? That's what the Rangers usually do in my world if I'm not around," she explained.

Chip's good humour deserted her. She ducked her head and wiped a paw across her eyes, sniffing. "Sorry, this has been..." Del came over and gave her a one armed hug. "Aw... c'mon, I'm sure he's fine..."

Chip motioned to Gadget. "C'mon over and sit down, and I'll explain. I assume in your world Sparky is a male lab rat with electric powers, originally working for Noreen... your version of Nimnul. She's got the same name in our world, but at present she's... unavailable. It relates to why Gadget..." there was a catch in her voice, "... is missing."

She led Gadget over to a table with a number of chairs around it. It was actually in the cockpit area of a stripped B-25 bomber, not Gadget's own, but the one that had been across from it, if the view out of the big glass dome was correct. The summoning area, a complex circle of inscriptions with still burning candles, had been set further back in the hull.

The rest of the Rangers seated themselves around, and Chip sat across from Gadget.

.

Gadget listened attentively in her distinctive head-cocked position, one ear subtly elevated.

Chip "If you have a Nimnul in your world, we're half way to explaining what's going on. About four months ago, Nimnul was released from the Pleasant Palms... again!" She practically growled this last word.

"She ducked and covered, and we didn't keep as close a watch on her as I should have. Well, for the first part I was in Washington." For some reason she rubbed at a raised patch of fur just visible on her stomach, some sort of scar, and an astute observer would also notice the ring she wore on the paw that rubbed it.

"The next thing we knew, Sparky had disappeared from where she'd gone back to work, her lab at M.I.T. We tracked her down, and found the trail led to where Nimnul had holed up. She'd rebuilt her geodesic observatory, or so it seemed, but her defences were much better than before. We barely avoided being shot down, mostly due to Gadget's flying. Nimnul had a dozen automatically targeting lightning cannons guarding the perimeter.

"That wasn't all. We were just in time to see the whole thing lift off into the sky. The whole place must have been carpeted in anti-gravity carpets. For the last week, she's been flying around the globe, demanding money and other things with menaces. Not only is the thing equipped with lightning cannons, but some sort of teleporter ray, so she can take what she wants without ever touching ground.

"At first governments tried to resist. But the lab is normally between 20 and a couple of hundred miles up, and anything coming close, missiles, or high altitude attack craft get fried by the cannons. I hear they even tried hiding some sort of reconissance robot in a gold shipment and got back a wad of tin foil and a snotty lecture on how she'd be a fool not to include a scanner in her teleporter.

"Gadget had a plan, our own teleporter device, built out of mobile phones, a sort of modemiser mk 2 that could teleport without a phone at the far end. With that we could get aboard. But before he could complete the design, he was snatched by Sparky, under some kind of mind control. Nimnul's next lecture included some gloating about how she'd... dealt... with..." Chip put a paw to her face, muffling a sob.

"C'mon Chip luv, you know that screwy sheila didn't mean it like that. She must have our mate caged up somewhere. She'd never pass up the chance to lord it over 'er 'one true rival'."

"Oh Maddy, I hope so." Chip said. She forced back a sniffle and said to Gadget. "I'm sorry, I'm not normally like this, but..."

Del piped up. "We'll get her back. I ain't gonna let the time I spent on your dress go to waste."

Gadget put a hand on the other girl's shoulder. "I understand," she said. "Just recently, in my world, Chip told me... how he feels. How both of you feel." She smiled gently. "And I've learned a lot recently about how having some feelings is ok. If you need to cry, no one here is gonna think less of you for it, that's for sure."

Chip's face grew brighter and she sighed. "Thanks. But I'm okay for now. I'm glad you and your Chip have that kind of relationship."

She pulled out a photo, which showed the pair of them, snuggled together, with Gadget's tail curled possessively around the chipmunk girl's waist. This world's Gadget was about half a head taller than Chip, and built like a carrot. His sleeveless blue jumpsuit did nothing to hide the muscle definition in his arms. He had a blond hair with a wave and welding goggles pushed up on his forehead and an open, pleasant expression. In short he was a major murine hottie.

Gadget turned quite pink. Seeing them snuggling, first off, was weird, and - "It feels very peculiar to be looking at a picture of myself and thinking how attractive I look," she mumbled, embarrassed. She took a deep breath, and returned her mind to the topic at hand.

"That doesn't sound like /our/ Nimnul, and from what you're saying, it doesn't sound like yours, either. If Nimnul wanted to do something like that, he could have years ago - he's had access to the technology," she said, frowning. "Nimnul - well, he enjoyed being the Wacky Mad Scientist too much to do something so /practical/, if you take my meaning, despite the fact we're talking about an observatory levitating thanks to flying carpet technology."

"Not to mention he's never really taken a 'small enough' view to know exactly who we are. He knew after the Modemizer incident we were a bunch of intelligent small animals, but it's not like he bothered to learn our names, we were just 'those rodents'. But suddenly he realizes we have a tech specialist, and the best place, time, method, and person to abduct him? It's very suspicious."

She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "It almost sounds like he's gone... sane," she said slowly. "Or else someone who IS sane is pulling his strings..."

Chip interjected, "Her, remember? Though the practical difference isn't great, Noreen Nimnul is a scruffy, frizzy haired ogre. But I never considered that possibility, someone else pulling the strings. The only one who ever did that was Britanny Clordane, and she's still in Troy's, life without parole. Maybe they actually cured her, made her sane, but she stayed evil, or at least vengeful."

Chip put her paw to her chin in an identical mannerism to the male version. "Hmm... If there is a 'power behind the throne' what are their objectives, looting with Nimnul as the patsy for when it falls apart? Or is Nimnul nothing more than a distraction, something to keep us looking to the sky while someone sneaks under the floorboards. I'll think about it..."

Gadget shook her head. "Enough time to figure out who we're dealing with later. Your Gadget... Gadget2...? although I should really do the polite thing and let him be Gadget1, after all, this is his universe and I'm the interloper," she considered. "Anyway, G1 should have a bunch of blueprints and notes on what he was working on. Do you still have them? Or were they stolen?"

"Oh no, they're here... and a full set of tools. We managed to escape with them before the Treehouse got a Nimnul inspired love tap with a laser beam. But we should be safe here. This place was going to be our wedding gift, well mainly a surprise for Gadget from all of us..."

She took a deep breath, blinking back tears, "This was somewhere with room for Gadget to actually build his bigger inventions. Everyone helped, and we kept it a total secret from him. We went out via an underground route from the Treehouse, something Del and I found before we ever formed the Rangers, so hopefully Nimnul thinks she got us, and won't be searching. Neither Gadget or Sparky know about this place, so hopefully neither does Nimnul."

Gadget blinked. "The... the tree?" she said, stunned. "After all the trouble we went through to save -"

She shook her head, putting it in her hands. "No. No, we... we did save the tree... this is... I'm very sorry," she said softly. "You must be very angry."

Chip nodded, her face grim. "The badge Athene gave us, all our momentoes and stuff... we got some of it into the escape tunnel, but... Angry doesn't even begin to cover it! That place was a home to me and Del back before the Rangers existed, when we were just a pair of bachelorettes, chasing after that lounge singer, Karl. But ultimately, it was a place, and can be replaced. People can't."

Gadget frowned. "I'm more convinced than ever something's wrong. Even a completely sane Nimnul shouldn't have a clue of how to find Ranger HQ. This sounds like an animal inside job to me, and that narrows our suspects considerably. We have to seriously consider the possibility he's teamed up with someone like Fat Cat, possibly even as an equal partnership. Kind of a Ranger Revenge Squad."

"Maybe things are different where you came from, but Sparkie lived with us for a time as a technical advisor. Nimnul found out we were intelligent from the modemiser incident, and may have kidnapped Sparkie to see if it held true for her. Which it did. I can think of at least three ways Nimnul could get a location out of a mind controlled Sparkie, even without a translator device. Heck, just her coming to the Treehouse to capture Gadget would have targeted us."

"Oh! Yes, that IS new information," Gadget squeaked thoughtfully. "Well, nevermind, scratchthat. We'll work on it later." She flashed a smile at Chip. "Isn't this where you tell me what a capital mistake it is to theorize with insufficient facts?"

She changed the subject. "I'm glad you saved the plans! My other suggestion would have been to root through G1's wastebaskets, I always go through about four designs before making a final commitment to a blueprint, but... I guess that wouldn't have been possible, anyway," she said, looking briefly crestfallen again.

"But - but no time for that, now. We need to get to work! Del, I'll need the blueprints. Chip, if you can show me the main work area, and where my - his tools are? If we're going to put something this complicated together, I'm gonna need everyone's help!" she said resolutely.

"You'll get it Gadget-luv." said Maddy, a sentiment echoed by the others.

Towards the back of the plane was a complete workshop. While not as advanced as the underground lair she had built herself, it was still impressive work. There was a rather nice notepad computer in one corner hooked up to a portable disk drive, a card reader and drawing tablet, and several reconditioned human handicraft tools which did duty as lathes and drill presses.

A central area several feet square was clear, though illuminated from overhead by several angle poise lamps. Around it there were also work-benches and racks of neat tools, and a number of stacks of components and pieces of junk for raw materials. There were also a number of notebooks and reference works.

Chip waved a paw at the assemblage. "I hope you can do something with this, for all our sakes."

Del strode over to the computer and stuck an inch square memory card into the reader. "Well, we gotta a place to start, anyhow."

She tapped away at the keyboard and a CAD program popped up, loaded with complex schematics.

"Golly, I'll say!" she exclaimed. "It's so much more than I even hoped for! This'll be no problem!"

"Hmm... he uses a more computer-based design method than I do... I could never do without the feel of having wood in my hand," she mused, plucking a makeshift pencil out of her jumpsuit and playing with it. "Let me see if his paradigm is the same as mine is, and I can actually understand what he's got written here. It should be! Then we can get started for real."

The short answer to her question was _yes_. It was kind of spooky, looking at neat diagrams and equations, done in your own notation and style, which you knew you'd never done. The design was almost complete, and for someone of Gadget's genius filling in the blanks was a simple exercise.

Chip filled in. "Gadget does do his initial designs on paper, but he's started transferring everything to computer for easier storage and design changes. He's even added some sort of simulator software..." She stopped herself, shoulders slumping.

Maddy growled. "Chippah, if you don't stop beating yourself up over this, I'm gonna get Tommy to pump you full of sleeping pill, so help me. This isn't the first time we've thought we lost Gadget, and that turned out all roight. 'eck, we even saved the bloomin' president while we were at it."

"And you got yourself a new piercing." Del said, grinning.

"Are you trying to make a point?" Chip replied with a bit of her earlier spirit.

Speedie chimed in. "That when we go rescue our buddy, you leave off painting a bullseye on your chest."

Foxglove sighed. "If it will make you feel any better, I'll do a divination to try and check on him. But you know it isn't completely reliable... Oh I forgot! With Gadget-chan here I won't be able to isolate a lock."

"It's so interesting how there's all these other changes, just because the genders are switched," Gadget said absently, fingers a blur on the keys as she conjured up the missing portions of the design on the diagram. "Foxy's still doing magic, Sparky's with the group, Chip and Gadget are about to get -"

She paused, and was quiet for a few long moments.

"....there," she said finally. "That's the finished design. Let me run it through the simulator and see what we get... golly, this is a lot better than doing dry runs in the lab with a fully constructed device... think of the time savings in explosives cleanup alone!"

Chip giggled. "That didn't sound any more comforting the _last_ time I heard it." She sighed.

"Hi guys, we have lunch... what the hey?" The voice came from an open mouse sized hatch further down the hull, and a squirrel, dragging a stack of pots from an airline meal, staggered up to the group. He had red hair in a short pigtail, and a green vest.

Chip waved a hand. "Foxglove's summoning spell worked. Alternate universe Gadget, meet Thomas Chestnutt, our team medic."

"They call me Tommy, when they call me anything that can be repeated in polite company." The squirrel said, grinning. "Enchanted, milady."

"Uh oh, crush alert!", called out Del, "All hands brace for impact!"

"Unfair and untrue!" The squirrel exclaimed still grinning. "I no longer crush on girls that often..."

"What never?" asked Del, with the air of one acting out an oft repeated dialogue.

Tommy was clearly reading from the same script. "Well, hardly ever."

"Permission to leave this group on grounds of insanity, mam!" Foxglove said to Chip lightly, raising her wingtip in a parody of a salute.

"Theirs or yours?" the chipmunk girl asked.

"Take your pick!" responded the bat smirking as he gestured around.

Chip waved an indication to turn down the general laughter at this. "Okay, enough... we're interrupting Gadget."

Gadget giggled. "You guys go right ahead," she said fondly. "I've missed hearing this like I used to. Oh, good news! Simulation is running fine, and shows 99% reintegration on transport!" she said cheerfully. "And that's well with the 2% margin of error, so we could actually be over 100% intact!"

She tapped on the keyboard, and a modified, old fashioned desk calculator - no, REALLY old fashioned, the kind that actually typed onto rolls of paper when you hit the keys - by the computer dutifully ejected a finished blueprint from its scroll.

"Ooookay," she said, lifting it with an all too familiar grin, the gleaming joy of invention glimmering in her eyes. "Who wants to find out if this thing works?"

If this was anime, there would have been sweatdrops. Del piped up. "Uh... did you say 99%? There are bits of me I really don't want to lose..."

"If you loose one percent of me, there won't be anything left!" added Speedie.

"Then we do some trial runs with an inanimate object first, guys." Chip stated, arms folded. "Gadget, just tell us what you need us to do."

As they got to work, Chip said, "So it did happen to you too, the MAP thing I mean. Don't worry, whatever happens you won't be separated from your team for more than an instant. The way Foxglove explained it you're held here by the summoning spell. When he releases it you'll snap back to when and where you were on your own... timeline. They'll never know you were gone."

"Oh, good! I was worried about how the guys would be doing without me - and more importantly, if they'd worry. This magic stuff is awfully handy!" Gadget said cheerfully. "Ummm, left - no, RIGHT handed framwinkle, please."

"Speaking of which," she said distractedly, leaning over the device rapidly taking shape - alas, a view unappreciated by the large female contingent present; oh, for missed opportunities - "why DID you keep up with your magic? Foxglove always said she didn't want to be reminded of Freddie... who come to think of it is probably still named 'Freddie' here... but to be honest, I always kind of suspected she just thought I hated magic."

"She was still so nervous in those early days, around everyone but Dale - for a while after she joined us full time she acted just like she had with Freddie, desperate to please, afraid she'd somehow lose us, so careful not to offend anyone. She knew not being to figure out how magic worked bothered me... I could never get her to talk about it, even. I'm curious why you chose differently."

Foxglove looked puzzled, and in his deep voice replied,

"Del persuaded me to do it soon after Wilhelm... _Willie_, my ex-boss was defeated. Del was tired of being the only one with supernatural abilities. I was kind of nervous at first, especially around everyone else, but she convinced me to reveal what I could do, and everyone was so supportive...

"It took time, though, at first we met over at my old place at the University, Humanities department. I was teaching her how to fly. I guess there was the element of wanting to live up to some of my anime idols. I'm a bit of an otaku, and I was worried they'd find that weird too. I'm so glad I was wrong."

Chip grinned. "What you didn't know was we'd already met up with zombies, mummies, leprechauns..."

Del continued, "...banshees, shapeshifting aliens..."

And Maddy finished, "... the ghost of my great aunt and a psychotic tuna in a salvaged submarine."

"Don't forget the time Nimnul's old modemiser swapped my head with hers.", came Speedie's bell like voice.

"How could we forget?" Chip exclaimed. "We got a dose of that too."

Del grinned and nudged the other chipmunk. "Not that it was all bad, Miss 'compatible species'."

"If I ever get him... NO! we will get Gadget back, and I will kiss him and hug him and..." she blushed.

"...Show him your sprocket collection?" Del finished, smirking.

Chip went solid crimson and exploded with a "DEL!"

She turned to Gadget. "Sorry about my so called friend. When we first met up in his old B-52 bomber, our Gadget was kinda flustered. He did kind of babble and offered to show us his sprocket collection. Well I guess you probably have one too. Perfectly innocent remark, right? However the crimson hacker over there has long since decided it was roughly equivalent to getting... well... snuggle bunny."

"And ever since I realised Foxy-muffin was my one and only, I've been using it to tease them both. It's great fun seeing who gets the most red!"

At the moment, that seemed to be Gadget. "Yes, um... what an odd idea that it would mean anything like that!" she said, cheeks crimson. "Oh, well, back to work!"

"MAP?" she queried after Foxglove finished, picking up a thought from several minutes ago, as she tended to do. "Is that what Nim was calling the Modemizer?"

"No. it..." Chip looked solemn. "It can't have happened to you then, thank heavens. It started out as just a raid on Nimnul's new lab to free some test animals..." She went on to tell of Gadget captured by the FBI and supposedly put down, a secret lab and brain implants, and a joyful reunion followed by a hair raising adventure in Washington, including herself taking a hypodermic dart through the chest. How her life had been saved by the surgeon general.

This took quite a while - several hundred pages of beautifully drawn adventure story, in fact. The device made substantial progress.

At the end, Gadget said, "That's... that's wonderful, I mean, you and Gadget... I can see how that would advance your relationship much further than Chip and I have gotten, but..." she shivered. "I - I've seen human villains do awful things before, but I - I never imagined... that's - that's torture, what they did to m- to Gadget. And the things they might have had him do, and probably did!" she said, shocked.

"He wasn't responsible for anything he did while under their command. His soul was so thoroughly suppressed Foxglove couldn't sense it with his crystals. Of course when he told us that we assumed..." Chip shook her head. "Thank heavens that was why. I'm sorry someone died as a result of it, but I'm not sorry it was that lunatic dictator."

Gadget worked quietly for a bit longer, then suddenly said, "...did Gadget propose to you?"

"Oh yes, on the night he got me out of the White House. We danced by mooonlight, and that first kiss... I couldn't quite believe it, I mean Gadget is the most brilliant, caring and gentle guy I know. He could have any girl he wanted. But it turns out he wanted me. I in no way could ever match up to him, but he still loves me. And I love him so much, ever since I first saw him take off that golf ball helmet. Urr, that sounds shallow. There's more to it than that. All I know is if I had it to do over again, I'd take the dart in an instant."

She realised everyone was starting at her and ducked her head.

"Oh boy, I started babbling didn't I?"

Maddy answered. "Loike a billabong in the rainy season, Chippah."

Tommy was looking at her with a bit of wistfulness, the others with sympathy.

"Everything will be fine, buddy." Del stated quietly.

"And don't worry about the babbling," Gadget said, wiping her hands off on a rag, then squeezing Chip's shoulder. "You had a great teacher. It's to be expected." She grinned.

"Well feel free to babble a little yourself. What's my counterpart like? Do you have a picture? I have wondered what things would have been like with no MAP interrupting them."

Gadget's expression sobered again. "It... hasn't been happening, not until recently. He proposed to me about two years ago, and -- and I don't know what happened, exactly. It was like suddenly I was in a different story, and I didn't know how it was supposed to go --"

She looked down at her hands, wiping them over and over with the rag.

"And I left, and the Rangers broke up."

There were expressions of shock all round. "But.. they couldn't!" exclaimed Chip, her face aghast.

Gadget shook her head.

"Then a few days ago, we all got back together again to save the world," she said, expression brightening softly. "And... and we're taking it a little slower, this time. We're going to just date, for a while. Sort of an experiment, y'know? And we'll see how it goes."

"No picture of him... actually, right now, I don't even have my picture of Daddy. Long story. I should really get one of Chip, though." She looked thoughtful.

The atmosphere was relieved. "Now that sounds more like it." said Del.

Chip nodded. "I can understand your point of view, I know how scared I was of letting my Gadget know my true feelings. You were scared of what might change... But I can't believe the team would break up over that. So tell us, what's he like?"

"Well, there were a lot of things. Dale and Foxglove got together, and after seeing my reaction, I think they felt they'd be... distracting. They'd been thinking of moving out, anyway; Dale wanted something to call his own so much, something not half-Chip's. And Monterey, he'd never been able to stay in one place very long, and of course Zipper went with him; and Sparky hadn't joined the team, he was still working at MIT."

"Really, we didn't... break up, per se. Chip stayed in the old HQ, and kept helping people, kept solving cases; but it was just him, and he changed it into sort of a private investigations office of his own. He's done a lot of good for the city."

"Golly. Chip," she sighed. "Chip is smart, maybe smarter than he knows, and he's always confident, in charge. He's the micromolecular cohesion holding the Rangers together, keeping these repelling particles from flying off in all directions, like they did a few years ago. He has an amazing eye for detail, and stubborn in all the best ways.

"He singlehandedly taught himself how to be a detective and how a lot of my machines work, just by observation, just because he refused to give up when anyone who isn't crazy would have." She smiled. "The perfect leader of the Rangers, in other words."

Chip grinned, "So he's an obsessive, pig headed workaholic. I like him already."

"You would." said Del, as she manouvred a piece of electronics with a metal casing off a storage rack and down to the floor with a podium mounted magno-ray that sat to one side of the open area. "Don't I get a thumbnail sketch?"

"Yeah, Gadget-luv, I think we'd all like to know 'ow the other 'alf live."

The devices were finished with the parts from that machine. They looked like a pair of sleek flip top mobile phones with extra components connected to the device ports. When open the top halves folded back flat (like a Razr)

To operate it, you targeted the destination phone via GPS reference and height above ground, or an offset in metres and direction from a landline phone number and, pressed call and it would transport the other unit there. To pass through you just stepped onto the screen.

When everyone was through, you pressed the 'hang up' button on the destination phone. The origin phone could be set to stay where it was, follow you to your destination, or with call diversion set, transport to a third destination. If the phone was already at a new location, you pressed redial to connect to it.

"Oh, gosh," Gadget said, ruffling her hair distractedly as she watched the final assembly manuevers. "I hardly know where to start. How do I tell you about people who've been my family, my friends, my... everything, in five minutes?"

She thought a moment then said slowly, "Monterey Jack's like our uncle... no. No, he's like Daddy," she said softly. "I think I can say that, now. He'd fight the world with both paws tied behind his back to protect any of us. Even from a cat." She smiled. "He'd probably tell them so many stories about his adventures all over the world they'd be forced to give in just to make him stop. Or maybe Zipper would have quietly beaten all of them while they were distracted, popping up when everyone had forgotten about him, like he always does."

"Foxglove, so outgoing, so affectionate... and inside, so nervous, so afraid she'd be turned away again. I think she was hurt very badly by people she trusted and cared about..." she shook her head. "She never took up magic after we stopped Freddy and her moon rock spell. She got into computers, instead - she probably knows more about them than I do. Online, she finally has more friends than you could ever count, all over the world... it's wonderful to see how happy it makes her."

"Sparky we met while Nimnul was training him using electric shocks to pull of a bank robbing caper - he's working at MIT, too. He's helping us on the current - um, no pun intended - mission, but I think, with the Rangers reforming, he may just join us for good. He's the only one of us with 'super powers' like you'd call 'em, Del." She smiled. "He retains an electric charge that hits anything he touches. He's brilliant, and I've kind of built up a tolerance to electricity for, um... well, since I was about two, so we get along really well."

"I guess that brings us to your counterpart, Dale. It's hard to describe Dale." she grinned as dozens of memories returned to her. "I'm working out a theory of Weirdness Magnets to explain how he manages to run into alien dinosaurs, alien rocks that give rubber powers, and alien... aliens. Sometimes it seems that happens once a week. Del, it sounds like you still have his stretching powers? Dale tried to take on the human who found the rest of the meteorite he got them from himself, and lost it. We beat him later, together, but the meteorite got ground into nothing but powder in the process."

She turned to Foxglove. "That must be the difference, with the magic! Dale had no super powers, so he didn't feel a need to urge our Foxy to be 'special', too. She followed your, and her, natural otaku interests instead, and she became much more technically minded."

"Chip, our Sheerluck Jones, Indiana Smith, leader, and current dating interest I've told you about. And, well, I'm just me, just Gadget Hackwrench, that's all. I have a mind-bashingly high IQ, and I bore easily." She smiled.

Maddy spoke for all of them. "It sounds loike our other selves 'ave done us proud."

Del said, "A wierdness magnet... yep, that fits. I removed Serena's rock by jumping into it, and when it landed and shattered, I ended up in a cloud of the stuff. I breathed it in and ended up permanently stretchy. I guess things happened differently for him. I wish I'd had it when I met up with that Broxlefleebian shapeshifter... or maybe not, that would have convinced the other two I was Dita..."

As he spoke, Gadget was teasing the final connection into place.

"It looks like we're about ready," she said. "Did Gadget have a lock on the flying base? I'm sure I can get one - it has to have some kind of communications device, clearly, even if it's not a phone, and we SHOULD be able to use it with no problems-"

Chip answered. "Nimnul uses a powerful TV transmitter to send his demands. I think he also has a satellite phone, but we don't know the number. I'm not sure exactly how Gadget intended to target them. We never got that far..."

Del examined them closely. "They look much neater than Nimnut's version. I guess this time we won't loose our heads."

Speedie said, "Well, it wasn't so much loosing our heads as swapping. I think I got the worst of that deal." She winced, remembering being stuck with Noreen Nimnul's decidedly inferior body.

"Hey, I'm not complaining." Del responded. "It means Foxy-muffin and me can plan on kids one day."

Chip was examining the plans. "According to this we walk through one at a time. So there's no chance of a mix up."

Gadget, meanwhile, was standing nearby, her hand on her chin, her eyes closed, as gender-reversed chipmunks examined the equipment.

(No one's been bonked on the head yet,) part of her brain thought distractedly. (Maybe they argue over... clothes, or something. I never understood the supposed correlation between female gender and fashion clearly...)

(...well, the compensatory Garwin circuit in the transmitter is well within burnout tolerances, so unless the transporter is subject to heavy use...) ran another thought, virtually simultaneously.

(I wonder if she keeps as much cheese as Monty does. I like cheese. The potential added cheese volume in this universe could be astronomical!) Gadget thought a moment later.

...fortunately, one of her concurrent threads WAS on the problem at hand, and about two seconds later, Gadget suddenly opened her eyes and said, "Well, we'll just ask her what her phone number is, of course."

"Huh? How!" Chip exclaimed.

Just then there was a shattering of glass, and a pair of cannisters came through the big domed window, spewing vapours. Several massive metal shapes appeared behind them, big robot cats, the size of bulldogs.

One extruded a weapon from it's head and a circular saw lanced out, starting to cut a big hole in the canopy for them to enter.

**Time for the ominous mechanical BGM you get with such things as Nimnul's flying carpet maker or the Cannon Laser.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2 - Gadget's Most Excellent Inter-dimensional Ambuscade**

"She's found us! Del, Foxglove!" Chip called out.

Del responded. "On it! This is a job for Bat Mask and Elasticate!"

Foxglove tapped his staff to the floor and their costumes changed, Del was suddenly dressed in a fur tight orange leotard, while Foxglove had a top hat, white domino mask and tuxedo top.

Foxglove waved his staff, "Winds of Walley, aid us!" A wind blew up from behind him, pushing back the spreading gas, but more cannisters were dropping in. Del stretched like a trampoline and intercepted a couple, rebounding them back through their entrance holes. But they were just slowing the inevitable.

The others were moving, but hadn't acted yet.

Gadget grabbed Chip suddenly, pulling her close by an arm before she could get too far away.

"We need to lose this," she whispered quickly. "Get the word to the others."

With that, in a flash she had vanished, darting into the darker corners of the underground lab. Quickly, she began grabbing parts - a bundle of wiring here, a pen flashlight there - disassembling and re-assembling as she went. A device was forming in her rapidly working hands, moments after she frantically formed the final blueprint in her mind, drawing from her own partially completed research, recalling every minute detail from one briefly glimpsed design she'd seen on the other Gadget's computer - only half-complete.

Gadget hoped that between the two of her, they could make this work.

Chip followed her for a few steps. "You have a plan? Okay, but we can only hold them for a few minutes, Nimnul'll be sending reinforcements. I'm guessing the only reason she hasn't used her big guns is that this time she wants bodies. We'll hold as long as possible, then I'll lead a fighting retreat to the tail, with the modemisers, the Rangerplane and a couple of Hover Mice are there."

The blonde chipmunk turned back to lead the fight, before Gadget could say anything. Maddy had jumped up onto the magno ray and had used it to bring down a desk fan, which she used to add to Foxglove's magic wind.

As the section of canopy fell inwards and a mecha-cat sprang forward, Tommy ripped the cover off an airline meal packet and ran forward, releasing the thing to slide forward to where it would land. He'd judged well, and one forepaw landed in the beef casserole. The robot slipped, landing on the package which splashed, causing it to stumble as it tried to recover it's feet.

As it finally did so, it extruded a gun muzzle from it's jaws, sweeping the area with red glowing eyes. It chose Maddy as it's target lining up... then slumped, the red light dimming and flicking off. Speedie flew out of one ear, carrying a pair of mouse scale wire cutters, which to her were like a pair of garden shears.

Chip bounded up on all fours and sprang, landing on the head of the disabled robot. As a second one stomped through the hole, she let fly with a couple of bottle cap shuriken, but these had something inside them.

They hit the new mecha-cat and stuck with a clank, then there was a double flash of sparks as the micro-magno-ray coil overloaded, causing an EMP pulse that fried electronics within about 6 inches, which in this case included the robots brain. It staggered and collapsed, half blocking the hole, but others were appearing, in golden teleport flashes, to take it's place...

Gadget was taking a huge risk, and she knew it. Her plan was based on the assumption Nimnul - whatever her name was - not only would choose to capture the Rangers, but that their enemies had been sent here for that very purpose. If death was sufficient, why bother capturing her male counterpart? Why not simply use Sparkie to eliminate him, and then the rest of the unprepared Rangers?

If nothing else - as unpleasant as it was to contemplate - simply strapping a reasonably powerful explosive to Sparkie would have taken out the Rangers, the tree, and given Nim's level of technology, most of the park. Given that Gadget HAD been captured, she was gambling that this overwhelming show of force was for the same purpose - probably to gloat over his helpless enemies before his final victory. It was a good gamble - a likely gamble - but the stakes were nothing less than the lives of this world's Rangers, and on their failure, possibly millions or billions more lives as Nim's rampage continued unstoppably.

Gadget thought she had a good idea about what might have caused this sudden change in Nimnul's methods. She just prayed she was right. Everything in the world might depend on it...

The robot mouths opened, and blunt weapon muzzles were extruded, blasting shots at the Rangers who ducked for cover (except Elasti-kate, who _was_ cover). They were leapfrogging backwards, using the shelves and whatever else they could as cover. Foxglove wavedand chanted and false images of the Rangers dashed from cover into the blasts of the advancing robots.

"Gadget! Whatever you're doing, do it soon!" called out Chip, helping a limping Maddy.

Gadget felt a strong urge to swear as she saw her initial conclusion was invalid. As usual, she indulged it, glad her father wasn't here to hear this. "Shoot, shoot, SHOOT!" she growled, pulling several connectors in rapid order and dropping half of her half assembled device - which would leave her with a quarter device, theoretically - to the floor. Fortunately, there were similar principles involved in what she'd half to do now, so she should be able to finish it in about, oh, a week -

No, no, just kidding. The whole idea it would take Gadget a week to respond to something with an invention. Absurd. :rolleyes:

The situation certainly looked bleak, and the rag-tag group of do-gooders couldn't possibly hold out long, when suddenly -

"Eyes covered, everyone!" trumpeted a voice that sounded oddly like a male version of Chip's. "This could get flashy!"

A figure leapt from the dark outskirts at the edges of the workshop, a long cape swirling around its form, obscuring its details. A cowl covered its features as it raised a bizarre device high over its head.

"Lights out, boys - or on, depending on how much this emits - oh, never mind!" it shouted, twisting something on the device.

Arcs of electricity sparked over the device, seemingly without affecting the one holding it. Several jumped to nearby pieces of metal, including one hapless robocat that was too close to the center of the action. It YOWWWLED mechanically, shaking, then crumpled to the ground.

The figure braced itself as a sudden bright wave of light FLASHED out from the device in all directions. The computer monitor, still running, exploded in a shower of sparks, and went dead as the wave hit it.

The powerful EMP burst - based on Chip's small bottle-cap designs, amplified by the efforts of two world's Gadgets - swept through the entirety of the workshop, and beyond, yard after yard, dozens in all directions - carpeting the entire area in a massive shell of electronics-collapsing energy.

The other Rangers stopped themselves, as it became clear they were out of opponents.

"Roight nice work, Gadget-luv!" yelled out Maddy. "Those mechanical moggies went down harder than a crocodile at a boot-makers convention." She scooped up one modemiser, while Foxglove lifted the other with his powerful wing.

"Yeah, that'll teach 'em to 'charge' in where they're not wanted." added Del, shrinking down to her normal shape.

Chip came running up on all paws. It didn't look like her EMP bottlecaps had been active. "That was great! But are the modemisers damaged?... We've still gotta get outta here, though, now she knows we're here, Nuts-nul may give us a laser beam hot foot. Speedie, high sentry!"

They were practically at the tail end of the plane, and Tommy was already pulling the covers off the Rangerplane, well _a_ Rangerplane. The ornithopter wings and fan tail were the same, as were the stork legs, but the overhead balloon was replaced by a set of narrower ones of the sort used to make balloon animals, wrapped horizontally round the main hull from front to back. It might not be able to carry quite as much weight, but the arrangement was more streamlined, it also made it possible for it to make a gear up landing on water.

A couple of computer mice sat by it, but with additions. Each had a double set of insect-like wings of shaped thermo-plastic, folded up against the body, and a set of drinking straw handlebars, attached where the cable would normally come out.

Gadget pulled down the hood. "Sorry for the bizarre getup -- I don't think Nimnul's not going to realize you got another Gadget somehow, especially if he has audio sensors and heard you yell my name, Chip, um no offense -- but the less he knows about WHAT kind of Gadget you got, the better!"

"Nimnul's not using direct modemizer technology anymore," she said hurriedly, clambering instinctively into the pilot's seat of the Ranger-whatever. "I had always vaguely suspected he might do this -- she -- whichever -- she's broadened its capability to encompass more than just audio spectrum.

"She's teleporting using broadcast /electricity/, most likely a low setting on the lightning gun; that's what caused those flashes we saw when everything teleported in," she explained breathlessly, strapping herself in. "Not needing a phone on the end point gives her much greater freedom on where she can send things, as you just saw! Bad. Very bad."

"That's why Sparky was grabbed first; she's a natural electrical source, and was very easy to locate and lock onto with the new system. And then he was able to pull out your Gadget, because like all these robotic minions and Sparky, he's highly resistant to electrical current.

"That's what threw all my initial calculations off; she can't capture any of you, because you'd never survive the reverse teleport, anyway. I suspect your Gadget came through frazzled enough she realized she'd never get any of the other Rangers intact, so she scrapped any notions she may have had along those lines, and just decided to knock you all off," she said matter-of-factly.

"Fortunately, since everything in the system is electrically based, that makes it very susceptible to this EMP I... we... us Gadgets... have been tinkering with. The residual polarization of the local area stopped any more from coming in, and it will give us a few minutes, until Nimnette figures out what's going on and just bombs us, or something. Enough time for us to fly," she said, gearing up the batteries as everyone finished clambering in with renewed urgency, "but only just, I'd say..."

Chip stared at her in wonder for a second. "That's amazing, you really are Gadget! I mean..." She shook her head and helped Maddy load the modemisers into the back seat of the Rangerplane.

"Me and Tommy on the flyers, that puts you, Speedie and Maddy in the Rangerplane. We've gotta get clear and give you some time to figure out a location on Nimnul's base. Foxglove, think you can give us some cover?"

The bat huffed. "I used up a lot of power already, but I think I can manage a simple illusion for a couple of minutes, at least from above... It means I'll be pretty much tapped out when we get up to Nimnul's."

Del held her arms out and they stretched into wings. She cuddled Foxglove briefly before flapping into the air. "My Foxy-muffin will deliver the goods. When it comes to magic, he's batting 1000!"

Chip bounded onto one of the mice and pressed a microswitch on the handle bars. It sprung up into the air as a foot flipped down. The wings unfolded and started humming back and forth like a humming bird, or a dragonfly's. The mouse hovered, front facing up at an angle, and the light from underneath speared out.

She flew up and hovered in front of a lever next to a glassed turret, one of the gun positions. Reaching forward and hauling it down released a set of weights, and the top panels of the turret folded back.

Maddy was in the Rangerplane flipping buttons. Looking over the panel, Gadget would see that the layout was practically identical to the one in her universe.

"Flying mice. Who'd have thought it?" Gadget marveled. "Well, besides me, presumably. I need to remember to put that in my notes..."

She lifted up, the landing gear popping free of the floor, and deftly maneuvered the Alta-Plane out through the newly opened egress.

"Now that we know she's using transmitted electricity to teleport, it should be pretty easy to trace the ionized path back to her base. And even Nim can only broadcast that kind of power so far, that focused, without wires, so she must have moved the lab fairly close. I don't think I can modify the phones on short notice to work by electric carrier waves, though." she noted, broadcasting across the Ranger's frequency (which Maddy had helpfully showed her; it was slightly off from what it was at Gadget's home world.) "Once I have a fix, I'm afraid we'll have to find some way in. Is everyone ready for that?"

It was Gadget's old junk yard. The plane was on the very edge of the yard with piles and walls of stacked rubbish around it, making canyons and cliffs. Over a boundary wall was a forest, leafy and green. On the far side of the yard was the main part of the airport, with passenger jets taking off and landing.

Chip called from just behind the left wing. "We haven't been able to figure out anything. Even Foxglove's illusion only covers us from one direction, so as soon as we get close... zap!"

"Oh, yes! I remember you mentioning the zapping part... sorry, I've been distracted.. that WOULD be a problem."

"It may not come to that!" called out Foxglove, worriedly. "10 o' clock low!"

There were five dots, moving towards the group. As they came closer you could hear a multiplex scream, and they resolved into robot hawks, each driven by a jet thruster that stuck out from beneath it's tail feathers. Each looked to be almost as big as the Rangerplane. They vectored, clearly having spotted the group.

"Uh oh!", quoth Del and Chip was irate. "Since when did Nimnul ever have contingency plans?"

"Since now, looks like." Tommy responded.

"Everyone, scatter, get to cover!" called out Chip.

"Um, not to worry, I can recalibrate the modemizers with no problem -- right after this --" Gadget observed, as the robotic avians screeched in, stage left. "Get some distance from the base, everyone! The reduced ionic potential of this area won't last that much longer, and then she'll be free to resume transports in!" she warned before she broke off.

Ignoring her own advice, Gadget sped the Rangerplane into the jagged canyons of junk, trying to give the others some breathing room. With luck they'd been programmed to consider the larger, easily recognized vehicle their primary target.

Three hawks dived in after her, and the othes split off to attack the smaller flyers. They were faster, but less manouvrable than the Rangerplane, and fortunately in the close confines of the canyons, they couldn't use that speed, or target their beak lasers.

That didn't stop them trying. One initial shot crossed the backseat at an angle and cut one of the tie-downs holding the modemisers in. Speedie tried to hold it together, but Maddy had to clamber across onto the back seat to hold things together, leaving Gadget in control of the plane.

Up above, Tommy had dived his Flaptor-mouse into the tree-line, a hawk following, while Chip, the furthest from cover and closest to the line had spun hers round and done a wildly weaving head to head pass. The hawk she faced finally got a bead on her at point blank range, and eschewing it's laser, rammed the vehicle, smacking it out of the sky and stooping on it with claws extended.

The flyer came to pieces in mid air, but Chip wasn't on it. At the last moment she'd leapt up and jumped onto the back of the hawk, slamming a small magnet onto it's back as a handhold. The hawk wasn't designed with kinematic feedback, so didn't notice the extra weight. Chip used a darning needle to pry up a panel and started pulling wires.

Foxglove and Del had disappeared as the last hawk veered to engage them. It hunted from side to side, then staggered in mid-air as it hit an invisible wall. It's wings folded up, seemingly forced, and it fell out of the sky. As it approached the ground, Del reappeared, wrapped around it's wings and body. Just before it piled into a stack of junk, she unfolded, opened out and blew away like a parachute. It hit the pile and exploded as the fuel tank let go.

Gadget was totally focused on her flying, leaving the other two to scramble as best they could despite her manoeuvres.

"Let's see... auxiliary throttle... good, good..." she murmured absently to herself, reaching across the seat to the passenger side and pulling on a lever. Due to the way Gadget built things, this actually opened up its own, separate circuit, allowing a larger - and more dangerous - surge of power to the wildly flapping wings. Cutting the edge of a leaning pile of garbage awfully closely, she briefly vanished from the view of her pursuers.

The moment she was out of visual contact, she thumbed the leg harpoon control. It shot out, thwacking into the teetering tower of random junk. She let the two forces work on each other just a second, jerking both plane and tower sharply, then detached the plunger.

The birds came around back into view just in time for the groaning edifice to come crashing downward. Desperately adding a burst of speed, the lead robots squeaked to safety; the last wasn't so lucky, and found itself under an upended antique bathtub, squawking in muffled, convincingly enraged tones that sounded as if they were questioning Gadget's parentage in some unknown mechano-avian tongue.

Two mecha hawks were still on Gadget's tail, trying to get a shot in. The hawk that had gone after Tommy rose from the woods with Tommy in it's claws. Del, in elastic bat form dived in to engage it, getting scorched by a graze from it's beam before she could adjust her shape to get out of the line of fire.

Chip, who was having trouble had clearly found some control cables and was futzing her hawks responses as it tried to go after Foxglove, but the mecha hawks resultant evolutions had come close to throwing her right off it's back. The bat was clearly too closely pursued to cast any magic, even if he had the power left.

The hawk could easily outrun him so he'd dived into the canyons, and was following a path that intersected up ahead with the one the Rangerplane was following. Up ahead they opened out into a small circular clearing with odd stacks of junk, where the hawks would have more manouvring room. A small junk shredder, clearly used for chopping up wood and paper waste sat in the middle.

The positions of the others were unknown to Gadget until Foxglove crossed her line of sight up ahead, flying like a bat out of H E double hockeysticks, which made sense. Then Chip and her mechanical mount flew into view. Chip gave a particularly fierce tug just as the hawk lined up a shot, and the wobble induced was the only thing preventing the masked bat from becoming Kentucky Fried chiropteran.

The hawk veered off, clipped a towering stack and something froze up, putting it into a tailspin that flung Chip right into the air. The hawk smashed into the control panel of the shredder, activating it. And Chip was now reaching the top of her ballistic curve, falling helplessly towards the hopper on it's top. In seconds she would be minced.

Suddenly, the chipmunk girl landed with a *foomp* on something yeidling and balloony, and bounced off of it. Well, the fall wouldn't kill her, but she was still headed towards the shredder...

until Gadget's hands grabbed hers, stopping her fall.

Now there were /two/ problems Chip could see. One, Gadget didn't appear to be pulling out of her dive towards the shredder. Two, if she was holding onto her with both hands, who was driving the plane?

A glance over revealed the mouse appeared to be steering the plane with her foot.

"Steady... steady..." she mumbled, eyes fixed straight ahead on the gaping, grinding maw of the menacing machine below. The horrific view zoomed closer, and closer --

At the last moment, Gadget KICKED the wheel sharply. The plane jerked at an impossible angle, appeared for one terrifying moment about to stall, then soared at a steep angle back upward.

The first hawk following her was feverishly putting on the brakes, and arrested its forward motion just in time.

Then the second bird barreled into it, and both of them plummeted into the shredder.

Gadget beamed at Chip, dangling from the side of the plane. "So --"

Whatever she was saying was drowned out as beneath them, a mind-melting SCREEEECHING noise was followed by an explosion of sparks and metal.

"--dontcha think?" she said cheerfully as the shredder quivered, and collapsed into a heap of smoking metal parts.

Chip shook her head, clearly to re-establish her bearings rather than disagreeing.

"I don't know what you said, but I agree completely." She replied, scrambling into the other front seat. "If you hadn't been there for me, I really would have been chips, or rather mince."

Foxglove zipped past below, on what should have been an intercept course if Gadget hadn't beaten him to it. He immediately soared up past them with a "Nice catch!" to go aid Del. She had managed to ball herself around the hawks legs, enclosing Tommy and protecting him from being crushed by feeding her substance between him and the claws. Unfortunately that left no attention for attacking the hawk.

Foxglove flourished his staff in one foot claw and waved it at a nearby tray full of mecha hawk parts. It slid onto an edge and positioned itself as he dropped on the overhanging part. The pieces went flying, glowing with an energy and machine-gunned the mecha.

It gave a pitiful squark and a burst of light insufficient to light a cigarette. Then it fell out of the sky, riddled. The rubber ball that was Del fell away and expanded into a hang glider carrying Tommy.

The came down level with the Rangerplane and Tommy said, "My flyers alright, it just picked me off it. We gotta go get..."

"Uh uh, we gotta get outta here!" interrupted Chip. "Foxglove, are we covered?"

The bat's voice showed strain. "Yes, but only for a few minutes... I have to rest soon."

Chip thought a second. "Then we'll have to use it... Grab on, guys!"

Foxglove landed on the back and grabbed on with both claws, while Del extended an arm and hauled herself and Tommy into the back, then oozed into the foot well wrapping herself around the mobile phones and her friends as some sort of restraint webbing.

Chip flipped back a toothpaste cap that was situated in the well between the pilot seats to reveal a big red button.

"Do the honours, Gadget."

"Right," she said, beaming. "Hold on t--"

She pressed the button, and the plane exploded forward like a mouse out of heck.

"-- iiiiiiii!" Gadget squealed. Belatedly, she fumbled for her goggles, pulling them down over her eyes, and settled in for a few quick moments of frantically twisting the wheel to avoid looming piles of junk.

In almost no time at all (but an eternity measured in heart attacks) the ship blasted free of the junkyard, dropping low to the ground as it zoomed towards the cover of the trees.

From the outside of the Rangerplane, the following events took place. As Gadget pressed the button, the Rangerplanes wings stopped flapping, rotated into a vertical chord and folded forward and along the sides of the plane, and inwards at the bottom to make a tapered wedge shape covering the bleach bottle nose, a lifting body. The Rangerwing drifted forward purely on the lift from it's inline balloons.

A larger Coo Coo Cola bottle visor extruded from a slit in the nose to shield the cockpit, and from the keel, just below the tail rudder fan, which was folding down into a more streamlined shape, a hatch opened and a hollow tube emerged. It lit up with a bright flame and a hybrid rocket motor (made from eraser tips soaked in hydrogen peroxide concentrated from hair bleach) shot the vehicle forward.

After 120 seconds and 4 miles of gut wrenching velocity, mixed with equal portions of terror, the thruster burned out, and the empty tube dropped out of the hatch, lightening the load on the Rangerplane. It slowed down as the wings unfolded to ornithopter mode.

"Whoa! It actually worked!" Chip exclaimed. "Quick, I see a hollow in that tree, it should be enough to shield us."

"That was wilder than a wallaby with spiny bristlecones stuck to 'is backside! A roight bonzer boost!", Maddy exclaimed, grinning fiercely.

Foxglove had his teeth gritted, and was clearly putting out his last gasp. Del un-melted and flowed up behind him, partially cocooning him in an imitation of snuggling bat wings and supporting him.

Gadget was grinning broadly. "I hope I have time to pick up the tube for study later! That was AWE -- um, it could be really useful," she squeaked, endeavouring to look casual.

Tugging her goggles back up, she manuevered the plane neatly into the hollow of the tree. "Okay. Get him some, er... Magic-Aide... whatever he needs to recover after that!" she said, glancing back in concern at the bat.

"Uhhh..." Foxglove groaned in response, his tux and mask fading out. "The only thing that will recharge my powers is a day's... sorry, night's sleep. Right now I don't have enough left to light a candle."

Del was still holding him and carted him out onto the floor of the hollow, reforming into a sleeping bag.

Chip looked around, "Speedie, Maddy, Tommy... I'm glad everyone made it. Hopefully we'll be safe for long enough for Gadget to triangulate, or whatever, on Nimnul's flying base. I'm getting kinda tired of people forcing me out of places. Everyone get some rest."

During the evening, the alternate Rangers were all still around, ready to help out. The food was meagre, some iron rations from the Rangerplane, but it had taken the edge of everyone's hunger. Chip had decided it was too risky to go outside to forage, which would possibly expose themselves to whatever detection system Nimnul was using.

After a couple of hours, Foxglove had recovered enough to materialise or rather condense water out of the air into a bucket, but once again it was the absolute minimum amount, since he was saving up energy for tomorrow.

Despite this morale was high. In the morning, they could stop hiding and start fighting back.

Gadget stayed up, as she tended to do when working on something big. The conditions couldn't be worse: instead of the painstakingly outfitted workshop, she was in a hole in a tree completely rewiring the phones and a few stray bits from her pockets, the plane, and Chip's equipment to track the distinctive electrical impulses.

She couldn't have been more at home.

&&&

By morning, Gadget had what looked vaguely like a swizzle stick in tin foil projecting from the top of one of the phones. She tapped keys on its face, frowning thoughtfully at the display.

"Well, there's good news, and bad news!" she said cheerfully, if a bit tiredly.

"The good news is, I have a fix on the lab. Apparently she's determined to stay in the area until he gets us, this time. Smart. Don't blame her. She's well within Modemizer range."

"Too roight!" "Excellent!" "Our luck had ta change sometime."

"The bad news is... one of the phones no longer works, and I don't think even I can fix it. Combination of a rough flight and having to use most of it to track the electrical signal."

She sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. "So... once we do get in, we'll have to find another way out. We can't transport back to the other phone. Trying to pinpoint a different ground phone from the lab on short notice while it's most likely crashing to earth would be, um... an interesting technical challenge."

She cracked her knuckles. "So! Business as usual," she squeaked cheerfully. "Who's ready to make a social 'call' on Noreen?"

Maddy grinned. "Social call? Maybe I should 'ave balked a cheese cake."

Chip looked around. "I think we all are... But we need at least some sort of plan. It's too much to ask you have any idea of where in the base we'll end up, you did enough just targeting it. If we're in the open, head for the nearest cover and we'll regroup under the biggest piece if possible. Our first priority is freeing and un-hypnotizing Gadget and Sparkie, then with their information maybe we can do something about that base. Finding an escape pod would be good too."

Del piped up. "Don't worry about getting out, just get me to an open door and I can parachute the lot of us down."

"I think that's all the planning we can do until we see the situation inside, and where we are," she confessed. "Although--"

She cupped her chin in her paw, frowning a moment.

"Two waves," she suggested. "The first will be the most dangerous by far... I have a bad feeling Noreen will have the incoming line trapped, for capture at best, to harm or kill at worst. We have to be prepared for it. Only one person; it'll probably only be a one-shot trap. I'll go." It didn't sound like it was open to debate.

"The second phone should still be ok to send a basic text transmission. I'll take it along with me. If I can, I'll send you one, so be watching the primary phone. Don't go until you get it. If I can't send one..."

She paused. "Figure on the worst. I'd tell you not to follow, but I doubt you'd listen."

She flipped open the transport-enabled phone.

"Now hold on!" exclaimed Chip. "If you go through there, I get Foxglove to cancel your summoning spell right now. Your universe needs you as much as ours does our Gadget. If anyone's going to take point, it's me, the leader! You go through when its proved safe."

"Now hang on sis!" responded Del. "I should do it, I'm the most likely to survive a physical attack." The others quickly chipped in with their bid to take first place.

It finally resolved as Gadget with Del and Foxglove, the one to protect the group from physical damage, the other to defend against less obvious threats and send Gadget home if things looked too bad.

Gadget sighed. "You're right... it's the smart thing to do. Three has a better chance than one...

"...and there's more important things than being smart, sometimes," she added quickly, her hand jabbing down to hit the speed-dial button as her other paw scooped up the second phone, clutching it tightly to her body.

The pre-input number she'd been setting up during the discussion beepbeepbeeped through in half a moment, and then everything around her seemed to pixelate into ever lower resolutions... being replaced by something else

The surroundings had the look of metal walls, and bare tubing that was Nimnul's lab. She hadn't arrived in the main workshop, but one of the store rooms. Various piles of junk were stacked haphazardly in a manner echoing their owners fractured mind.

But the main thing she noticed as her surroundings resolved themselves were a row of the same robot cats that had attacked the plane, at least a dozen, eyes glowing red.

It was a few seconds before Gadget would notice that their tails were all stuck into a row of sockets along the wall they stood against. They were clearly powered down and recharging. There was a door leading from the room, activated by a pressure pad on the wall, and there were voices coming from behind it, raised ones.

Gadget made a mental note that it might be useful to rewire one of the cats for camouflage and personal transport. However, first she had to figure out what was being said. She crept close to the door, and put her substantial ear against it, listening carefully. Meanwhile, she flipped open the phone under her arm, and gingerly began tapping out a text message to send.

OK CATS NOT ON COME QUIETLY

The others quickly came piling in, all with their heads attached to their own bodies, unsurprising as the transmitter screen was only big enough for one at a time. Foxglove had actually appeared before she'd finished typing the message. "I came to check if you needed sending back myself." he gravelled as Del appeared.

Chip was next. "That was an idiotic stunt!" she stated angrily. Then she deflated, sighing. "...and probably exactly what my own Gadget would have done in the same place. But for the sake of my blood pressure, please be more careful next time."

She looked around. "I couldn't have wished for a better entry location. Great targeting work."

"I can't exactly take credit... I didn't really know what we'd find here," she whispered, waving the others to be quiet. "Nimnulette and, um, someone else are talking... trying to hear. Oh! I need one of you to start opening up a cat's head, I think using it as transport could be really handy camouflage... little something I picked up from Monty, in our world..."

"Already on it!" stated Chip, motioning Maddy and Speedie to take it on.

As Gadget listened at the door, the voices resolved. One was a whiney, nasal female voice, the other a guy. An outside observer would say his voice actor was Tony Jay, the guy who voiced Sher Khan in Talespin.

The guy. "... professor, you will make the appearance and stick to the script!"

The female voice was raised. "How dare you dictate my actions! Your microscopic little mind can barely even comprehend the vast intellect of Noreen Nimnul!"

"You were quick enough to accept the help of the Black Table when you were locked up in that mental institution. We got you out, funded the construction of this little fortress of yours. And without our aid in closing the loopholes you left in your defences, you would have been caught long since. Now we expect some payback."

"You'll get payback alright, if I ever figure out the antidote to that drug you put in me!"

There was a low chuckle. "But until then, you had better make my wishes your first concern, if you want my people to continue to deliver the antidote. Enough of this. Have you found the other Rescue Rangers?"

The whine went up a notch. "They vanished off my biosensors shortly after they destroyed my robo-hawks! Those wretched rodents! Always wrecking my scientifically superb schemes."

"Run a spiral search pattern from the last known position. You found them before, you can do it again. We lost enough valuable assets, even had our existence exposed because of those creatures. It is fortunate we 'removed' Snow and the others before she could reveal anything critical. I will not allow the rat another bite."

Gadget looked at Chip after listening to the conversation, an uncharacteristically perplexed look across her features, and silently mouthed, "...wait, what?" to her.

Chip looked stunned at first, and finally moticed Gadget's expression. She shook her head, then thumped it with the heel of her hand.

"Of course, why didn't I see it! The change in Nimnul's MO, the concentration on Gadget and Sparky... rodents of exceptional promise... She's just the catspaw for the Black Table."

Maddy piped up from where she was hauling a hunk of circuitry out of a fiberglass feline. "Cat's ain't my favourite creature at any toime!"

Seeing Gadget non-plussed, Chip went on. "That MAP I told you about, it was nominally a CIA research project, but really had been subverted by a bunch of crooks calling themselves the Black Table, either a group trying to rule the world from behind the scenes or just making huge wedges of cash out of various types on sneakery and double dealing, we never really found out. Think CLUTCH from those old Femme Fatale spy movies Del drools over."

(Note: CLUTCH - CounciL for Undertaking Terrorism, Crime and Haberdashery. Sort of like SPECTRE in James Bond. The last part was down to an underling making a mistake when drafting the final version of it's charter. )

"I don't drool!" Del responded hotly. "I watch them for the action sequences, not the Fatale-boys. Besides Foxy's all the hero I'll ever need." That got her a winged hug.

"Okay... sorry, this explains a lot, but it doesn't tell us where Gadget and Sparkie are."

Gadget sighed. "We would have been better off with Fat Cat..." she said disconsolantly. "Chip, I'm going to need you more than ever -- I don't know the first thing about these Black Table people, so I can't make any predictions about how they might act."

"To be honest, me either. I only ever managed to eavesdrop one of their videophone calls and that was by accident. However, I can see several posibilities. Nimnul's actions could cover their own activities directly. For example, destroying a building apparently on a whim just after Black Table operatives have stolen something.

"It could also be more subtle, by causing people to focus on an obvious threat and loose faith in their current leaders while the Black Table sets up their own puppets. And they know who we are, our team name, so they must have found a way to communicate with Gadget or Sparkie. So they know our capabilities, except for you, Gadget. You're our wild card, so you should make the plan."

"Let me go over and see if I can keep these cats offline. all except for ours, of course. Although -- Fox, is there some kind of spell you can work that would just prevent them from executing any overtly agressive action?" she said shrewdly. "It would be much less suspicious if they stayed online, and would give us more time before they realized something's up. Maybe if I get you into the computers first..."

Foxglove shook his head. "There are spells that will do that kind of thing, but they're rituals that take time to set up, and I somehow doubt they would work on a robot anyway. Couldn't my cutie and you get together and rewire them or something to do the same thing, or even come to our aid?"

"Del, if you make your hand flat enough, you should be able to figure out where the air flow in here is coming from, and get us into some kind of ventilation system. We won't be able to ferry everyone in the cat, and being in two teams would be safer, anyway."

The stretchy girl chipmunk was already extending one arm up as a weathercock. After a few seconds she extended off towards one of the walls, and oozed under a crate, sliding it to one side. There was a ventilator behind it.

"Great! Thanks, Del." Gadget had her chin cupped again, pondering.

"We need to move fast. They could call the cats online at any moment. At any moment they could realize we're not to be found below, and they might realize what we've done."

"Del, Speedie, the ventilation could be a tight or awkwardly-shaped squeeze. Head out, find what you can. Stay hidden. We're going to be the ones causing trouble... sorry you'll have to miss it, but I really need your skills poking around."

"Maddie, if you've got our cat off the circuits, I'm going to try and reprogram the rest. I can't completely hack them --" she hesitated for a half second, then continued -- "on this short notice; I'm not that good with computers. But I bet I can have them go crazy on the ship, performing random actions, and make them impossible to give orders to. That's what I'm going to shoot for. That will get them out of our hair, and hopefully keep the humans busy."

Del, back in her normal shape, nodded. "I'll send you Speedie if we find anything."

"Sounds like a plan!" the fly chimed. "Del Fatale, super-spy, and Tai Kwan Leap, her trusty shinobi sidekick, are on the case..."

The pair headed off into the duct.

"OI never expected to willingly end up inside a cat, mates." Maddy said. "But it's clean as a dingo's dish in there."

Chip nodded. "I'll handle the door opening once everyone's inside."

Gadget was busy frantically dancing on the human keyboard, trying to reprogram the rest of the mechafeline army.

"And loop back to start and... there! Garbage In, Garbage Out! And nobody can make something from garbage like I can!" she said, pleased. "We have about, um, three minutes -- everyone in -- Maddie, pull on that, it'll move the left rear leg I think -- Tommy, I need you up here, push down on that when I tell you to-"

She twisted two disconnected, straggling wires together ("Ouch!"), and the de-interiored cat's eyes lit back up a glowing red.

The other cats' eyes began to flicker. "Um, maybe just a /bit/ less than three minutes -- Chip! Door!"

"On it!" As the others scrambled into the hatch of the cat-mecha, Chip bounded across and up onto a box, half climbing, half trianglr jumping to reach the access plate. She rebounded off it, and her grapnel line snaked out to catch a light fitting, swinging her round as she slid down the rope and dropped onto the head of the now moving mecha-cat.

The door slid open, revealing the naular corridor that surrounded the central lab. Nimnul and the unknown male had moved on, so this section was empty.

There was a yoooooowling noise, and cats began spilling out of the storage room in all directions. One rapidly settled in to clawing non-existent curtains, its metal claws leaving scratches on the wall. Another leapt up on a table in the lab, and began batting a round-bottomed beaker back and forth like a ball of yarn. One got up on its hind legs, and began hobbling down the hall awkwardly. Everywhere, cats were... being cats.

"There. If they can figure out we're the one cat not acting randomly, they deserve to catch us," Gadget squeaked. "Let's go! There's a good chance Sparkie and Gadget will be in the central lab, somewhere!"

Under Gadget's carefully calculated directions, the final cat lurched forward, stumbling into the lab to begin a desperate search...

Del and Speedie were way ahead of them, looking down on the expanse of domed lab from an air-conditioning grill up above. There were many interesting things and devices scattered around the work benches, numerous waldos and auto-manufacturing tools, but a new thing was a wide screen TV with some kind of video-conferencing set up, currently inactive.

"Looks like we hit a blank, hey pal?" said Del.

"Worth a try." replied Speedie.

Nimnul's base had two levels, an upper one with the open plan lab under a geodesic dome and a disc shaped lower one with smaller rooms for storage and living quarters. They were served by a common ring shaped corridor halfway between the two, with an airlock to the outside and ramps leading up and down. A basement level was fully underground (normally) and only reached by steps. Imagine a beach ball resting on a tyre, with a hat box under it split into two decks and you have the general idea.

The Ranger rebuilt robo-cat was bounding around the ring, stopping at each door to see what was what. The Rangers inside were as quiet as mice... well mice, chipmunks, bats and squirrels who were trying to be quiet.

It was at about the fourth down ramp that they saw Noreen Nimnul going into a room. To Gadget, she bore more of a resemblance to Winifred with big horn rimmed glasses than a female version of Nimnul. She was too busy muttering imprecations on the parentage, unpleasant habits and probable infernal destination of a 'Mr Jones', possibly the male voice they'd heard, to notice the cat.

Coming up alongside the open door, they could see in, and along with a number of other things, there were two cages on a table, which Nimnul was inspecting. She was still facing away from the door, which was starting to slide shut.

"Hehehehe... You're both far more useful now you're properly motivated and utterly under my control..." the mad scientist cackled.

"We have to get her now," Gadget whispered. "Go!"

The wobbly cat barreled forward to its current top speed, barely making it through the door, and leapt at the mad scientist.

Nimnul didn't realise anything was amiss until the very last second. She started to turn as the mecha-cat leapt.

"What? I... Yahahahaha!" As the cat dug it's claws into her side, she started frantically flailing at it, wailing loudly. She fell backwards, bonking her head against a piece of machinery, but one other wild swipes caught the robot and flung it up onto the table, springing the hatch and dumping the Rangers there. The robot's eyes flickered out, and some sparks appeared between it's ears. It wasn't going anywhere for a while.

Noreen Nimnul shrieked, an awful sound. She could just see over the edge of the table, and there were her worst nightmares. "Eeeek! Those wretched rodents... those pint-sized pests... Get them! Destroy them, I don't care how! Rip them limb from limb!"

There were no other mecha-animals in the room, but the cages were occupied. The simple latch doors opened and out stepped two figures, a male mouse with blond, close cropped hair and a tattered but still useable deep blue jumpsuit, and a female rat in a lab-coat with spiky white (Washu-style) hair.

They turned and started walking towards the downed Rangers, Sparkie crackling with an aura of electrical energy. The male Gadget, however was unarmed until he reached down to a 2 inch nail that stuck up slightly from the table surface and pulled it out, without apparent strain.

Nimnul had recovered her composure. "Yehahahaha! This is too rich, destroyed by the ones they came to rescue! Never mess with a motivated rat or a mind controlled mouse!"

Maddy, being the toughest, recovered first and rushed forward, "Mates, you don't have'ta... blimey!" She ducked a swipe with Gadget's nail that would have taken her head off.

As a follow up, the male mouse casually reached out with his free hand, caught the massive mousette by the scruff of the neck and flung her off to smack into the wall behind the bench. She slid down unconscious. Sparkie had oddly enough taken a step back while Gadget was flinging Maddy around.

Gadget had to act quickly. Her best chance against both G2 and Sparkie was before they realized a second Gadget was in the fray.

She leapt forward between the two, a weapon in each hand. Sparkie took a swipe from her right-handed framwinkle, a metal, blunt weapon. By her calculations, given his past fighting style, he'd block with his paw instinctively, even knowing intellectually the electricity would have reduced effect on her. He might try to channel extra electricity into her, though; neither of them had really tested just how much direct current she could handle ... a risk she had to take.

The other Gadget was riskier. How many calculations was he making? Her only real hope was she was just ahead of him, thanks to his mind-controlled state -- it tended to dull the thinking. Given Noreen's command, he would go for a direct, aggressive assault immediately... she hoped.

If the swing came, she was ready to block. In her other hand was a nail.

Only hers had a loop of wire from the cat wrapped around its length, to even better channel the surge of electricity from Sparkie. If the burst of current conducted through her body acted as an impromptu electroshock and jolted him out of his current mental state, all was well... assuming she didn't pass out in the process. If not... well, there most definitely WOULD be Problems.

Gadget had correctly realised that the pair were staying apart deliberately, and for the right reason. Sparkie blocked her attack, seeming not to feel the blow (In her own world, Buzz, when in this state had run straight through solid brick walls and not felt it). Electricity coursed along the nail and wire, causing female Gadget's hair to go all frizzy.

There was only one problem, male Gadget wasn't attacking. He was staying back as before. However, he suddenly slipped towards her, and then fell onto the nail in her other hand.

Foxglove had recovered and used a spell to grease the floor under his feet, then a combination of Chip and Tommy had barreled into the mouse. They all lit up like a christmas tree, showing skeletons and forming an 'Eat at Joe's' sign.

They all lay there, unmoving, as Nimnul cackled frantically. "At last! Finally I have defeated those digigrade do-gooders! I hope the security cameras caught it!" She thought for a moment. "Yes, I have to get a camera!"

She bustled off.

rom the bottom of the pile came a weak alto voice that sounded a bit like Gadget.

"Uh... Chip, not that it isn't a highly enjoyable feeling, but you really shouldn't be lying on me like this. Not until we're married, anyway..."

Male Gadget, who from now we'll call G2, sat up, lifting the prone chipmunk off him and laying her carefully to the side. He looked over at Gadget, and a slightly puzzled expression crossed his face.

"You know, you remind me of someone..."

Gadget smiled dazedly, patting down her frazzled hair. "It could have been worse. *I* could have fallen on you... that would have been REALLY awkward."

Gingerly, she extended a hand. "Hi," she said warmly. "My name's Gadget Hackwrench. What's YOUR name?"

The male looked shocked, which made sense considering the charge he'd been subjected to, but he also looked surprised. He stood up.

"Isn't that a coincidence, my name's Gadget Hackwrench too, that is, not two, because that would mean my dad would have also been named Gadget, and he was named Gegaw, but too as in also. Of course, since we both have the same name, one of us will have to change something about our names to avoid confusion, so maybe I should be Gadget Hackwrench 2, or G2 for short, since as a lady you should have the first use of the nammmmphh!"

It was at this point that Chip woke up, and launched herself into a projectile glomph. Gadget stiffened at first, then relaxed, putting his arms around her. The kiss started out urgent, and calmed down into a more gentle, sweet and tender, but still deeply passionate smooch, the sort that usually finishes a romance film.

About half way through, Chip's leg popped, the lower leg and heel kicking up backwards. Eventually, lack of oxygen forced them apart.

"Golly...", Gadget 2 sighed, "That was..."

"...very, very nice..." continued Chip, then giggled.

The others were all starting to wake up as well.

Chip continued, "... that is just like when I got out of the President's mansion, our first kiss. Remember what happened next? You showed me that picture of us all switched round by Nimnul's teleporter, and that genetic comparison chart."

Gadget chuckled warmly. "Oh, yes, and I said something like, 'Genetic code are not easily separated once fused with foreign DNA. The chipmunk genetic codes are still a part of my reproductive genome.'"

"And I figured what it meant and proceeded to examine the inside of my eyelids."

"Uh, mates, we can jaw later!" Maddy stated, "Roight now we need to get outta here before Mad Madame Nimnul gets back."

Gadget's expression was unreadable as she watched... herself and Chip kiss. After Maddy's pronouncement, though, she seemed perky enough.

"Looks like we're back to four-paw drive, but I think the time for secrets is over, anyway. The Rescue Rangers Reunited, all we have to do is defeat a brilliant mad scientist with enormous powers, and the incredibly potent international secret cabal that supports him, to save the world!"

Chip giggled, a wonderful sound. "Is that all? Glad we don't have a hard job." She was still hugging Gadget-2, but it was now a one armed hug rather than the virtual supplex it had been earlier. She started moving towards the vents.

"Piece 'o cake, Gadget-lass... I could go for some cake roight now, cheese cake to be precise." Maddy added.

She considered. "She needs a reactor to power the teleportation and lightning gun devices, even if it flies by rug power. Our best bet is taking hat out... do any of you happen to have any potatoes?"

Tommy made a show of looking through his pockets. "Uh, no, I left them in my other pants."

"Del probably has some potato chips..." Foxglove stated, and gestured with his wand.

They managed to get inside the air conditioning duct, and shortly after, Del and Sparkie found them.

"Hey guys! You'll never guess what we found!"

Gadget said cheerfully, "A convenient (and in this case literal) machina that will allow us to somehow defeat overwhelming odds? That's usually how these cases end in my world. Well, or possibly it could just be some snacks, considering."

Gadget was happy. How many people actually got to save themselves?

Speedie shook her head. "Uh uh. But we did find the room where that Black Table guy lives, and better yet he was on his computer, reporting to his superiors via IP phone. From what we heard he was paranoid about security, especially from Nimnul, so the room was secured, the link quantum password protected, the works.

"He discussed their plan. They're using Nimnul to spread fear and create distrust of the existing government, and to cover up their own operations through blasting things and theft. Eventually, they'll hang him out to dry and have their catspaws hailed as the ones who did it. It's like a Femme Fatale movie, only these guys are really doing it!"

Del continued. "When he rang off, and prepared a follow up report, I figured this might be an opportunity. I do remember the address of that security office at the White House and some of that stuff looked mighty important. I got Speedie to fly in through the vent and buzz around his head, then I oozed up underneath him and tripped him as he staggered about."

"He was out for the count, and I had a little play with his computer. I blind CCed the report and any other operational files to the White House, then accessed their main computer and planted a couple of nasty little viruses."

She reached into her one piece costume and pulled out a micro-USB module. "And you said I'd never get to use this, Chip. Their mainframe is going to start dumping the most highly protected files in it's databanks to random locations, newspaper offices, Sheriff stations, the FBI... Which is gonna be a whole lot of fun. Then i wiped my access log so hopefully he won't figure out what happened."

Chip giggled somewhat maniacally, "Oh, that's rich! You go girls!" She sobered up quickly enough. "But did you see anything that looked like a main power plant on your way round?"

"Nope, but we only checked the top level."

Chip clasped Gadget 2's paw. "Okay, down we go guys, Gadget's idea about taking out the power plant seems like a good one. But first we figure out a route to escape by."

Meanwhile Gadget 2 had been looking at Gadget with a puzzled expression. "Uh, excuse me for saying, but you really are a lot like me... your mannerisms, way of speaking, everything apart from being a girl. Well, gosh, it's almost like you're a duplicate of me from another dimension, only where my gender is different. Or you're a really fanatical Ranger fan."

"Well, I DO have clippings of all our cases, and I am a pretty big fan of the Rangers!" Gadget-1 offered, beaming. "However, in addition, I *am* a duplicate of me from another dimension, only where my gender is different. Er, that is, duplicate of you. And a duplicate of me, too, considering. I make the best possible duplicate of me, really," she said thoughtfully.

"My initial impression is we can't teleport off, as you need electrical tolerance of some kind to survive the trip. Do you recall them saying anything about that, Gadget? Probably the best way off to try and find out how Noreen and these Black Table guys get on and off, and stow away on that. If they just teleport, well, then we know that way's not lethal after all, which increases its usefulness exponentially as an escape option."

Meanwhile, she led the scampering crew deeper into the bowels of the flying lab, hopefully towards the reactor room.

"I don't honestly know." Stated Gadget's male counterpart. "Nimnul never explained, at least whiile I was conscious. He managed to reactivate the implant the Black Chapter gave me, which more or less shunts my consciousness out of circuit. He woke me up a couple of times to gloat... but it's all kind of hazy... ohmigosh, the Treehouse! I saw it get destroyed." His shoulders slumped.

"Nimnul told me I'd aimed the beam before she switched my implant off."

Maddy had slung the still unconscious Sparkie over her shoulder to carry her out, but the lab rat was beginning to stir.

"Ohh... my head, my goodness, Nimnul, no!"

"It's okay, Sparkie. We've got you, now," Gadget said sympathetically.

"Well... the only good thing about this is, we don't seem to be dealing with his mass mouse hypnosis, refined for individual use. G2 and Sparkie were, unfortunately, specifically susceptible to being controlled. If I have anything to say about it, I'll help you find out a way to put an end to that before I go," she said, determined.

Sparkie woke up from her nightmare, and squinted from her fireman's carry on Maddy's shoulder at the mouse inventress. Maddy's mackintosh was rubberised, and therefore was protecting her from the lab rats rising charge.

"Gadget? When did you start wearing your hair long? And your voice has changed too."

Maddy chuckled. "It's alroight Sparkie, this is another Gadget."

Sparkie focussed more clearly. "Another Gadget? That would explain why she's wearing her hair long and speaking in a higher voice... of course the fact that she's a girl also has something to do with it. So she must be another Gadget, maybe a variant clone or from another dimension. Ummm.. Maddy?"

"Yes, Sparkie-lass?"

"Could you put me down please?"

"I think I may also be a little shorter," Gadget offered helpfully as Sparkie was carefully set down. "Pleased to meet you, Sparkie! Glad to have you back with us."

She glanced up as her large ears detected a change in the intensity of a soft hum vibrating through the walls. "I think we're just about to the reactor room... get ready."

The next ventilator proved to be it.

The generator room was at the centre of the 'basement' level, a broad circular space dominated by a ring of depressingly ordinary electric dynamos and rows of Nimnul designed accumulators. The system was fed by an array of Stirling engines (closed cycle steam engines), built out of refrigerators. The heat source was an intense beam of light fed up from the exact centre of the room and was split off to hit the various boilers.

Several control panels were scattered around on the annular catwalk that encircled the two story room. One, facing the vent, showed a schematic of the system, showing where the light beam was coming from. They were almost 50 miles above the Earth's surface, and in perpetual unfiltered sunlight.

Somehow, Nimnul had used rings of carefully placed electrostatic emitters to turn the very thin ionised air around them into a giant frensel lens that focussed the sun's rays from hundreds of metres around the lab onto a parabolic reflector that hung underneath. Megawatts of un-interuptable, inexhaustible power, with enough accumulator reserve that she could spend several days in shadow and still operate.

"Jackpot!" said Chip, grinning.

"Hmm," Gadget said thoughtfully. "Cutting off the beam won't work... it looks like she has enough storage capacity to operate for days even without new input. That's bad."

"Well, when in doubt, plan B, standing for 'Blow it Up,' she said cheerfully. "Foxy, if we provide a substantial source of cold, can you create a big lens to my specifications out of ice right where the beam of light comes into the ship?" she pointed. "That should most efficiently provide a huge surge of power, more than the boilers and capacitors can handle, and totally overload the whole system. And the stored energy won't do any good if they're overloaded, too, and pop their cork."

"G2, can you get Foxglove an efficient feed of freon have all those fridges? Dale, help me start reprogramming --- there's sure to be fail safes, we need 'em all off line! We want an unblocked flow of energy into these girls! Chip, I've got the science end -- it's up to you to manage the rest of our forces to take care of anything else!"

"Uh... okay, but we'll need some kind of escape route. I've never known Nimnul to build something without an escape pod... Zipper, scout the rest of the level, find us a way off. Maddy, Tommy, let's jam the door!"

The Rangers set to work with a will.

And Rangers have a LOT of will.

The two programming rodents each sprinted off in a different direction around the circle of machinery, and pounced on the human-sized keyboards that ran the shebang. Soon they were jumping over the keys, Dale and Gadget each in their own inimitable style, deftly calling up options, and shutting down all the safety features and backups manually.

At first, it all seemed to be going well, but as they reached the final set of interlocks, an alarm began to sound, and armoured shutters slammed down over the ducts.

"Warning! System integrity compromised. Suppression measures in effect!"

Air started howling out of the room as vents to the outside opened in the floor. In it's pace anesthetic gas flooded in. The Rangers were sent tumbling by the air flow, and in seconds were unconscious.

**You did not think it would be that easy, did you? Oh no, there is more in store for our heroes with paws.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3 - Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Action Sequence**

Gadget came too with a bit of a headache, which turned into a bit more of a headache when she saw the situation she was in, and that of the other Rangers. All of them were in seamless, clear plastic boxes, arranged in a row on a workbench in the main lab. The big screen was in full view, and an automated camera on an arm was hovering near by.

Nimnul was standing there, giggling maniacally.

"Yehahaha! At last, I have the Rangers in my power! Now I not longer need that annoying mouse or my traitorous rat assistant! I'll even destroy his clone, or whatever the other one is." She glowered for a moment. "If only that fly hadn't been sucked out of the vents. Then I'd truly have the full set."

The goon with the Sher Khan voice was standing off to one side. "Professor, you should have destroyed them straight away. They are too dangerous to let live!"

"They'll be destroyed soon enough, but on world wide broadcast TV! For years I was ridiculed because I said they foiled my every scheme. Now everyone will see I was telling the truth. And because this room now has my voco-modulariser active, everyone will hear it too!"

She leaned over Chip. "Speak wretched rodent, or I will kill one of your little friends right now!"

Chip stood silent for a moment, then growled. "Grrr! You haven't gotten away with this yet, you second rate, scientific shmuck!"

Her voice echoed around the room, and the guy looked around in surprise. "Remarkable. I've heard it before and I still don't believe it. It's one thing to see them acting intelligently, another to hear them speak. You have a delay circuit in the line so I can cut them out if they mention our organisation?"

Nimnul nodded. "I see they're waking up, so it's showtime!"

Gadget quietly slipped a soda can's pop-top out of a pocket of her jumpsuit. A few deft moves shaped it into what she needed, and she tucked it away again for the right moment.

Her work done, she stood up, attracting the humans' attention. "Golly, I just built a vocalizer recently myself, as it happens!" she squeaked cheerily. "Of course mine also allows limited mind-to-mind communication, but still, it's very impressive!" she said encouragingly.

"So," she continued conversationally, "what sort of fiendish demise do you have planned? You've been waiting for this moment a long time, I know, so it must be REALLY impressive. I mean, you only get to destroy us once! I know I'd want to make it really, really incredible."

"Well aren't you the inquisitive one, little miss clone?"

G2 spoke up, shaking his head as if still clearing it. "Actually she's another me from an alternate dimension, identical except for her gender... oops."

He looked a little embarrassed, as he looked around at the others. "Golly, I just can't stand to see a mis-conceived hypothesis, or take credit for work that I haven't done, and I never explored the concept of cloning, let alone engaged in any practical applications."

Nimnul mused. "Another dimension? I was going to destroy her out of hand as a demonstration to keep you all in line, but it appears I'll need her as research material. Nucleating neutrons! That means I can't destroy any of you yet, as you all have to be alive for the big showdown."

She took out a remote and waved it. "As for destroying you, I adapted a transporter beam to teleport a target a little at a time. Each of your enclosures is equipped with a one way grid. It will strip you away molecule by molecule over about 10 seconds and reassemble you as hamburger. Since it will start at your feet, you should be conscious for most of that time. The pain should be exquisite! And I can even sell the remains as high quality cat food, so say 'chow!'"

She waved her remote and the camera moved to cover her.

"But first, I have my public..."

She pressed a button and the camera's transmit light lit up. Her face appeared on the wide screen, obviously currently used as a feedback monitor.

Gadget slipped the cunningly reshaped pop top from her jumpsuit, and ... blew into it.

A very high-pitched whistle, well out of human hearing range, shrilly broadcast over the newly broadcasting feed. It was not, however, out of the hearing range of a very large number of animals who happened to be nearby every monitor showing the mad scientist's face all over the world: an enormous variety of dogs, cats, rodents, bats, and certain insect life, among others, capable of hearing sounds in an upper register.

The quick, chirpy tune was well known to many creatures the world over:

o/~ Ch ch ch chip and Dale's, Rescue Rangers o/~

Gadget tucked the homemade whistle away again. Now she had to wait, and hope, and give anyone whose attention she'd just gotten as much information as she could... fortunately, the one thing Noreen still didn't have was subtlety, and the lab didn't appear to bother with any sort of stealth. It was just going to float overhead, gloating.

Nimnul moved Gadget and Sparkie's cases over to a side table, and pressed another button on her controller and a transparency flashed on with 'Suggestifier Active'. The stroboscopic subliminal waves riding the TV signal couldn't yet be made strong enough to simply turn everyone watching into obedient zombies, but anyone watching would be more than usually suggestible.

She had long hypothesised that the reason most people couldn't see what was so obvious to her, was the effect of social framing and indoctrination. Even she'd suffered from it, unable to believe the creatures were intelligent until she'd had her head bashed into the truth, or rather transported onto that icky fly's body. That had broken her conditioning, and her little story tonight would do the same for everyone watching.

Speedie heard the whistle and knew something was wrong. She followed the sound to a air vent overlooking the main lab. What she saw froze her ichor... insects don't have blood. She frantically looked for a way to get her friends out, but couldn't see any obvious way... so she flew in closer just as Nimnul started her speech.

"Hehehee! Once again, I Noreen Nimnul, greatest evil genius scientist in the world am talking to the world. For years people laughed at me, called me mad, because I insisted a group of animals were responsible for fouling my brilliant schemes! But now I'll have the last laugh!"

She stepped to one side and the camera zoomed in on the cages, sweeping across them and showing close ups of the Rangers.

"They call themselves the Rescue Rangers, and they've made a career out of stopping honest criminals and helping people, and generally being disgustingly dogooders! You people may recognise Elasti-kate and the Masked Bat, since they're already known as 'super zeroes', but the others are just as annoying to all decent do-badders like myself!"

She pointed them out.

"Charlotte 'Chip' Maplewood, their self righteous leader and supposed detective. Della Oakmont, computer geek, better known as Elasti-kate. Madison 'Maddy' Wisconsin Colby, an overweight Australian muscle mouse, Foxglove, ex-witch's familiar, bordering on annoying, now sneaking around as the Masked Bat, Tomas Chestnut, who bandages their boo boos, and finally a mouse who had the effrontery to believe he had the intellect to match wits with a genius such as me, Gadget Hackwrench, inventor of junk, such as this."

A table opened up to one side and a number of artifacts rose on a large work surface. How Nimnul had gotten some of these, they didn't know, but Gadget's orbiter was there, and the Gyrotank, the supposedly destroyed Rangerwing, and the Rangermobile, all with the double R symbol. The camera swept across them.

"And they're not the only ones! There's a whole society of intellient animals, protected by the fact that some mental block prevents humans from seeing what they really are! Even a genius such as myself thought they were no more than mindless animals, despite the way they thwarted me at every turn. When my brilliant modemiser malfunctioned due to that pesky fly, my head was swapped for hers, and I was forced to see the truth. And thanks to my brilliance, you all will too!"

Then the screen started to run a five minute VT sequence. It might almost be entitled, 'The Rescue Ranger's greatest hits'. A lot of it was from a first person point of view, Gadget 2's, but there was obviously a number of pieces of security camera footage, as well as some hand held video camera footage.

Landing the Spaceplane was there, and saving the Global Gold Reserve, stopping Serena the Travel Agent from stealing ancient monuments, stopping the theft of the flying tank, and returning gems and jewels from various robberies. Even saving the president from a poison dart.

Various other vehicles, interior shots of the Ranger HQ, certainly enough information to make any unbiased observer realise they were the real deal, and that Nimnul's invidious appellations were, once stripped of their vitriol, more or less right. Oddly enough it showed them each at their best, probably because Nimnul wanted nothing to detract from the impression they were serious opponents.

Nimnul seemed bound to explain. "A lot of it, I downloaded straight from that annoying blond mouse's memories, but it's amazing what people kept, and didn't reveal for fear of being called a fool. Oh, and the fly, one Speedie, got blown outside, so she won't be joining us for the rest of her life."

"Your worlds greatest 'heroes'," she practically spat out the word, "and none of you knew! They foolishly snuck aboard and attempted to bring down my fortress. And now on global TV I will destroy them, and you will know there is no hope left!"

While this rant had been going on, Speedie had been scouting carefully. The controller seemed to be the key, but she was nervous about messing around inside it and setting off something that could hurt her friends. Instead she snuck up to Gadget's case and pulled the hermetic seal, unlatching it and then moving on to Sparkie's.

"What can we do?" she whispered, as Nimnul ranted on.

Gadget hastened out of her cage. with luck, Nimnul wouldn't notice for quite a while; she was the odd girl out, here, outside of the main group. Nimnul would be sure to focus on her primary nemeses first.

"Um... working on it..." she whispered back to Speedie. "Make sure you stay out of sight -- she's certain you're dead! You're our biggest advantage right now. I don't think you can free anyone else without her noticing, unfortunately. If you see a chance, though, take it."

For her part, Gadget scurried closer to Ms. Nimnul. She had to get that remote... even a few seconds would be enough to disable it, she was sure (knowing Nimnul, for one thing it probably ran on batteries which could simply be removed.) And if she could get a little more time than that, she might be able to rewire it to teleport the Rangers all at once, instead of a molecule at a time -- teleport them right outside their cages!

And once the Alter-Rangers were free... well, Nimnul had thoughtfully provided the Gyrotank...

The side table they were on being one in Nimnul's lab, it was full of half finished or discarded inventions, litter and empty pizza boxes, so she had also thoughtfully provided just about any kind of junk a super-genius inventor might need for a daring escape and rescue plan.

Sparkie was released, still shaking her head to clear it, then massaging her temples. Of course this meant that just before she touched them, a spark leapt from her fingertips to her head, making a double Jacobs ladder. Her hair poofed out in the style known as 'the Einstein permanent'. She bounded down to land beside Gadget.

"Uhhh... so what's the plan?" she asked, relying on the fact that Gadget already seemed to be working on something.

The VT sequence was almost over at this point, and whatever they were going to do, they'd have to do it fast.

"I'm going to get that remote. Speedie, once I'm on it, get to the other Rangers enclosures and release them. Sparkie, we need to stop his broadcast, and disable his defenses. See what you can do with his control panels…"

Nimnul was winding down, and preparing to zap the remaining Rangers, when Del called out. "Hey! Before you fry us, something you might like to know! That 'antidote' the Black Table guy is feeding you, it's a fake! I found it when I hacked their network on his computer! It's a bunch of stuff inside a pill that takes about a day to dissolve, and that's what makes you feel ill."

The 'Black Table guy' had punched his edit button as soon as the redheaded chipmunk had said, 'Black Table'. Now he swore and pulled out a large and nasty gun, aimed at the case containing Del. There were two things wrong with this picture, one the case itself was made of the toughest stuff Nimnul's insane genius could devise, and Del herself was immune due to her rubber band powers.

Not that it mattered, because the gun didn't fire. The guy frantically tried to get it to work, swinging it to cover Nimnul. She seemingly ignored this, exclaiming, "Egad! No wonder I couldn't find a poison agent, no matter how hard I tried! But why would they fake it?"

Chip was ready with an answer. "Maybe they figured any real poison, you'd figure an antidote, and the fact that he tried to stop Del proves her stories true!"

BTG wasn't used to people ignoring him, especially when he had a gun. "darn! Why won't this thing work?" He'd dropped the cutout switch to free his hand to try and fix it.

Nimnul put her hands on her hips, giving him a 'look'. "Oh please. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid. Let you walk around my lab with loaded firearms? The first night you were here, I irradiated your room with a catalyser ray that inactivated the primer in your bullets' percussion caps. Your ammunition may as well be spitballs. And forget the self-destruct systems you built into the structure of the base, I found and deactivated them long ago."

He advanced on her, reckoning on intimidating her physically. "I can still pull you to pieces with my bare hands, you ugly little science geek!"

Nimnul giggled, stepping sideways and pulling a lever. "Nyahahaha! Pity I don't _use_ my bare hands!" A pair of giant white gloved waldo arms reached down from the ceiling, grabbing the guy's shoulders and lifting him up in the air. "At last! I am free of acting as a lackey for the Black Table! Now I can start my own reign of terror until the nations of the world call me their mistress!"

She turned to the Rangers on the main table. "You've been most helpful. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to let you go. With the Black Table unable to thwart me, you are my last obstacle to complete domination of the world! I'd say farewell, but since I'm about to mince you on a molecular level that would be rather pointless!"

She raised the remote, just as Gadget jumped from the top of the camera currently providing a close-up of the mad professor to the entire planet. She landed, bit Nimnul's hand, and jumped onto the remote as Nimnul released it. She had the catch released and the batteries out before it hit the ground.

"Owwwww! It hurts!" screeched Professor Nimnul, as she clutched her abused hand.

Speedie had been watching and didn't miss her cue. She zipped across the table, flipping each sealing lever to open as she did so. The cases rose up, releasing the Rangers.

Chip was ready to take advantage of it. "Speedie, nice work, stay loose and provide support! Del, Foxy, take down Nimnul! Tommy, Maddie, the Gyrotank, Gadget and I will take the Rangerwing!"

There was a chorus of "Rescue Rangers, away!" and they scattered.

One of the first things Foxglove did, was hold out a wingtip and call out in some ancient language. His toothbrush staff flew from the discarded debris to his wing (anyone who's ever completed a decent Defense Against the Dark Arts course will tell you the first spell you learn to cast wandless is one to summon your wand - SSR).

Del stretched out and grabbed the edge of the table with her forepaws, and Foxglove dropped his staff into a foot claw and rushed over to climb piggy back onto her. Del let herself relax, and her arms snapped back, flinging the pair straight at Nimnul like a catapult.

"Minions! Cybercats! Mechahawks! To mmmmph!" Del expanded into a wide sheet as she approached, wrapping round the screaming scientists head. Foxglove, meanwhile, was gesturing with his staff, and a length of cabling sprung from a nearby table and tried to wrap itself around the scientist like a snake.

Meanwhile, the 8 seater Rangerwing was dusting off, Chip extending the grappler claw, even as the male Gadget jazzed the bottlecap controls. Beside it, the Gyrotank rolled into action with a whine, as it drove off the edge at high speed and spun it's sucker ring round to attach to the wall and climb down. While Gadget's machinations in the machine room had taken the inactive robots out of action, the ones that had been patrolling were still very much functional. A dozen of them bounded in through the door, as the same number of mechanical hawks flew in through vents in the ceiling.

Sparkie had made a small mistake, due to nervousness. Nimnul had dozens of secondary camera points set up, in order to cover the demise of the Rangers in as many ways as possible for her own private enjoyment. As she traveled across the camera control panel, rather than switching the external feed to 'off', she flipped it the other way, creating a composite signal of all the various feeds. The result was that the world ended up seeing the Rangers at their butt kicking best in high definition.

Even as the cable started to wrap around her, Nimnul's flailing arm grabbed something off a table and brought the device up to her face, activating it. Del released her hold and fell off the mad madam scientist's face, her cloth thin form vibrating uncontrollably before she shrunk back to her basic chipmunk shape. Foxglove ceased controlling the cable, and swooped in to catch the red nosed chipmunk girl and tow her out of the danger zone.

"Attack the creatures!" yelled Nimnul, her voice cracking. "Let's see you try that again with a harmonic oscillator to resonate you off my face!"

The mecha-hawks dove on the Rangerwing, and only Gadget's improbable basic flight manouvres saved them from being fried by a half dozen beak lasers. These caused a certain amount of damage to the floor underneath them. She hauled the Rangerwing up in a tight loop de loop, allowing the echelon of jet powered hawks to sweep underneath. While the main laboratory was a big room, it was not huge for the purposes of even foot long fliers, and the Rangerwing's agility counted for much more than the mecha-hawks' speed.

In the time it took them to loop round, the Rangerwing went to ground, weaving between big hunks of machinery and storage units. The hawks followed, but a couple were unable to match them and smashed into obstacles, blowing up as their fuel tank ruptured and highly explosive jet fuel vapour flooded into internal spaces filled with electrical circuitry. Gadget spotted something on a table and took a chance of climbing up over the edge, skimming across the surface in the open.

"Chip, get that!" He indicated to Chip what he was after, and the grappler claw snatched it up, rotating the device back towards the chasing hawks. Their beams blasted tools and devices all around them, but the Rangerwing kept performing unexpected evasions. It suddenly changed mode, flying straight up, and from the device in it's claw came several bolts of lightning, each spearing a hawk and making it crash out of the air and into more vital equipment.

While the Rangerwing was the focus of the aerial battle, the Gyromobile was facing equally ludicrous odds. A group of three mecha moggies were bounding after it as it boosted along on full blow dry power. Maddy headed it down a walk way between two solid benches, and found too late that it ended in a wall and a freestanding shelving unit full of tools.

"Tooraloo! It's a bloomin' dead end!" Maddy yelled.

Tommy put paws to some secondary controls. "We can run a Jericho play!"

Maddy spun the wheel. "Bonzer idea Tommy-lad!"

As the Gyrotank spun in a boootlegger's turn, Tommy pressed a button and the plunger ring swiveled and adjusted pitch, first shooting two cable linked plungers out into the bench walls either side, while another pair shot out behind and upwards plunking into one of the upper shelves. The Gyrotank came to a sudden halt, and the mecha cats sprung forward, eager to make a kill. The cables on the shelf plungers tautened, and the shelf unit started tipping forwards, even as the hair dryer went into overheat.

As the cats sprang, Tommy released the side plungers, and the Gyrotank shot forwards, pulling the shelving unit with it. The cats overshot, landing where it had been, just in time to receive a shelving unit full of heavy tools from above. Speedie flew in through the window slit as another pair of mecha cats bounded over the benches to chase them. She whispered in Maddy's ear, and the big Auzzie mouse nodded. "Gotcha!"

The fly buzzed out, and the Gyromobile zoomed after her, the cats in hot pursuit. It turned down a side path that ended in a blank wall, a seeming mistake, but Maddy ploughed forward. As they reached the end, she J-turned, decelerated and Tommy flipped the vehicle over to gyro mode, climbing backwards up the wall. Even as this happened, Speedie levered a can of oil off a bench and it hit the floor, popping open and spraying it's contents over the tiles.

The cats were still running at full tilt when they reached the slick, and skidded helplessly at full tilt into the wall. One tried to rise to it's feet after a few seconds, only to be landed on by the Gyromobile. It's electronic eyes flickered and died.

The Rangerwing was still flying a running battle with the remaining hawks when Chip saw that Del and Foxglove were held at bay by Nimnul, the mad scientist having picked up a flashlight-like hilt and switched it on. A beam of energy extended from it, terminating in a grid of glowing green energy threads.

Vwooom! Vsst! Each place he struck the surface was embedded with a smoking grid of lines. The two Rangers were fully occupied avoiding his attacks, so there was no time for Foxglove to set down and cast a spell, or for Del to stretch in and disarm him.

"Gadget, go help them, I'll distract our playmates!" The blonde chipmunk stood up, holding on to the windshield with one paw as her other drew her grapnel line. She ducked down and kissed Gadget's forehead, causing him to colour slightly.

"For luck!" she said. She flung out the grapnel at a vertical stanchion they were passing and the extended bobby pin hook caught. Jumping off, the Rangerwing's forward momentum caused her to whip around like a stone on the end of a string, bringing her all the way round just as the mecha hawks passed underneath. She let go and dropped down on the rearmost, jamming a dress makers pin into a crack in the fuselage. She pulled herself forward and repeated her earlier trick, opening the access panel and hauling on the control cables.

Suddenly, the rearmost bird started blasting away at it's cohorts, smashing two before the others scattered, and dispersing the pursuit of the Rangerwing. Gadget dived on the professor and held his dive with one paw as he triggered the lighting gun with the other. The shots missed, but the bombardment made Nimnul hunch up and duck, which meant she was no longer menacing Del and Foxglove.

The bat struck out with his staff, and called out a spell, and a blast of golden energy knocked the beam swatter out of Nimnul's hand, sending it spinning through the air. A mecha cat, circular saw blade extruded, was about to leap from a piece of machinery onto the Gyromobile, which was passing underneath. The beam swatter sliced into it, causing it to pause with a puzzled expression before falling into two pieces.

"I didn't know you played dice, Foxy-muffin!" Del commented with a grin.

Foxglove snickered, "It's the cats bane, an Expeliar-mouse spell!"

Two hawks had designated Chip's hawk as a threat and were chasing it, blasting away. She led them in a slalom between the rams that held the Black Table goon, who was still struggling to free himself. One clipped a support and spun away tp explode against the wall, but the other got a line on Chip's bird and shot it's tail, causing it to shudder and freeze up. Now Chip could no longer dodge and the next shot would be dead on target…

The Gyrotank climbed up the wall level with them and shot a plunger from it's ring, hitting Chip and snatching her off the back of the bird just as the second shot hit. She had to grab her hat to avoid it being incinerated. The hawk spiraled out of the sky, crashing into a mecha-cat that had been chasing the Gyro tank, and exploding with enthusiasm. A second plunger shot out to snag the chasing bird and let it swing round on the end of the cable, smashing into the wall in front of them.

"I figured you might need a mite of help, Chip-lass!" called up Maddy.

Chip smiled in sheer relief, but said in a mock annoyed tone, "Just what are you incinerating by that?"

The Rangerwing had come under fire from the last remaining mecha-hawk, which managed to hit the lightning gun carried underneath it on it's initial pass. Gadget pulled away from harassing the Professor, and dived for a mess of cabling that hung from the ceiling, trusting to the Rangerwing's superior mobility.

But the mecha-hawk dogged, or rather, birded his tail, and one of the stray shots freed a cable the swung down, forcing Gadget to roll wildly to evade it. The hawk came up on a catenary, and it's red eyes glowed as it tracked target...

Then Speedie buzzed in on a head to head pass, barrel rolling over a laser blast that would have otherwise incinerated her. She flung the bottle-cap she carried at the mechanical raptors camera lenses, and the oil it was filled with splattered them. The cap stuck on it's beak, and the bird tried to clear it away by blasting it.

Bad move, the plastic cap melted and ignited, and set fore to the oil. Sight gone and guidance circuits damaged by the heat, the hawk failed to evade the cables, clipped one, and went into a flat spin, trailing greasy smoke and buzz sawing into one of the mechanical arms holding the Black Table goon, where it exploded, showering him with debris.

The workshop, initially a mess, looked more like a disaster zone. There were fires here and there, and laser damage was all over the place. Shelves and storage units had fallen over and scattered their contents, adding to the disarray. The last of the mecha cats was being chased down by the Rangerwing, and the Rangers were forming up. Chip flung out her grapnel and caught a ceiling projection, then signaled Maddy, or rather Tommy to release her. She swung across the lab, to land on the table across from the main control panel where Del and Foxglove were making their stand.

"Why won't you just die!", screamed Nimnul.

Del expanded herself to face her, calling out, "Because good always triumphs over evil!"

A Timothy Dalton voice called out, "Warning, overload in defense systems…" A secondary screen lit up showing the underside of the base, dominated by a big weapon of some kind, mounted on an under-slung mechanical arm… but not for long as parts of it glowed brightly and then the entire thing exploded, falling away from the hull trailing vapours. The entire base lurched, causing more things to tip over.

Professor Nimnul screeched, "Yeaaah! No, not my beautiful super-laser!"

Female Gadget and Sparkie emerged from a grille in the main control panel. "Golly, if that isn't your super laser, we're going to have to do it all over again."

Foxglove swung his staff, and the cabling rose up again.

Nimnul's nerve broke and she ran for relatively undamaged teleporter bay. On her way she snatched up a bracelet from the panel. She jumped into the bay, calling out, "You may have beaten me, but I'll have the last laugh! With out an electrostatic modulator bracelet you have no way out!"

She was jumped by the Black Table goon, who'd freed himself after the mechanical arms holding him were damaged. "That is my way…" The teleporter flashed, and the pair disappeared.

"Darn! They got away!", exclaimed Chip. Then she noticed some things left in the teleporter bay, an empty lab coat and a suit, "… though without their clothes…"

Male Gadget dropped down in the Rangerwing and carried Sparkie and female Gadget across to the table where the others were.

"Well actually, they haven't.", female Gadget said, "… gotten away that is, though they did get transported with out clothing. You see Sparkie and I came up with some new protocols for the transporter while we were in there. We figured that they've been terrorising the world, so we should let the world deal with them…"

&&&

The General Assembly of the United Nations was in full emergency session when Nimnul's latest broadcast started. They had watched the rant, his presentation of the Rangers prowess, and the heroic battle. By the end of the last, there were cheers every time a robot went down, and a massive cheer when the super laser, Nimnul's primary weapon, was destroyed.

As the two villains vanished from the screen, there was a flash on the Speakers podium, and Professor Noreen Nimnul, and the Black Table guy, appeared, au naturel. They tried to run, hampered by the need to cover themselves, but were quickly brought down by security guards and several of the more athletic members of the assembly. Not many people can say they've been dog-piled by America, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The crazy professor, and the agent were led away, the professor still spouting her message of vengeance. "And I'd have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those wretched Rescue Rangers! I'll get even… uh oh!" She suddenly looked as if she'd remembered something important. "On second thoughts, I'm guilty, please lock me away, as far underground as possible…"

&&&

The White House was a similar state of shock. President Logan, along with his wife, the Surgeon General, and the head of the secret service, were watching the broadcast, hoping it wasn't some twisted scheme.

An aide ran up, carrying notes. "Sir, it's been confirmed! Nimnul and the man from this Black Table organisation have appeared in the General Assembly building in New York. It's really over!"

Branson, the black guy with the buzz cut who was in effective control of the President's security, had a mobile to his ear. "The security office is still getting those downloads as well, and they're dynamite! Names, locations, financial records, minutes… they're still getting things organised, but it looks like we'll be able to crack the Black Table wide open, finally! And the files have the header, 'Courtesy of Elasti-kate'. It seems before they were captured, she did a number on that guys computer security."

The president sighed. "I'm finding it hard to believe that after everything we've been through, those endless sessions with the chiefs of staff, our salvation came from a group of talking animals. For that matter, the talking animals on their own is enough of a stretch…"

Mrs Logan replied, "_You_ think it's a stretch? Intelligent, self aware animals..." She shook her head, "This means half the textbooks on mental function will have to be rewritten. And if there are other ones out there, things get even worse."

"Well Mrs Logan, with the existence of Elasti-kate and the Masked Bat, we knew some animals were more than they seemed, and the whole MAP business confirmed there were others. But I agree, it's one thing to read about it, another to see it."

Tress Logan, the first kid, as it were came dashing in. "Dad, it's Chipette, she's Chipette, the one that creepy lady called Charlotte!"

"Now hold on there slugger!" the president said. Tress knew nothing about the reports the Secret Service had recorded for the president on the MAP incident, or seen the film of Charlotte taking the dart and Gadget kicking butt. As the Surgeon General, and the one who had operated on Charlotte, the First Lady been interviewed and knew some of the truth.

Tress wouldn't be stopped. "And the mouse that was flying that plane... the night I let Chipe... Charlotte go, it was because that mouse came into my room to see her. It seems kind of screwy now, but I could tell they were a couple. But I only just remembered, the guy, Gadget, was wearing clothes! I think I recognise some of the others too from when they were on the podium. I mean you saw those video clips."

The president nodded. "I did. It looks like those really _are_ the same animals from back then."

Mrs Logan added. "At least it explains who did the neat job of bandaging that kept your Chipette alive until I could operate on her."

"She was never mine,she was always his." The girl pointed at the screen where Gadget was hugging Chip close, his tail wrapping around her. The camera viewpoint was close enough to see the expressions on the Rangers faces. Del had taken the more direct approach of grabbing onto Foxglove, and giving him a smooch that was making hs tail curl.

"Shouldn't they get medals or something? They stopped me opening the box with that rat and the syringe in. That could of hurt us, or you.... maybe there's bad smart animals as well as good ones and that was some kind of assassin."

Branson shook his head. "There goes operational security..."

"I can't wait to see what the PETA forums are saying. Us animal rights 'nuts' have been saying all along that animals were people too. I can just imagine what this proof is going to do."

The president looked rueful. "So can I. Great! And all I had to deal with this morning was an insane professor backed by a global conpiracy in a flying fortress. Now I've got real problems."

On screen they could hear Charlotte wondering about what the human authorities would do now Nimnul had been de-fanged. Maddy put in worriedly, that since they did't know how it happened, they might decide to blow the thing up with missiles while Nimnul was not there to defend it.

"Daddy!" Tress was looking towards him, expression pleading.

The president pulled out his mobile and pressed the speed dial. "Get me the Secretary of Defence, and our UN representative." He turned to Tress.

"Don't worry slugger. I owe those 'Rescue Rangers' three times over. I was one of the main sponsors of the Space plane program, back in Congress. If that first one had crashed, my career would have been wrecked with it. As well as saving you, and possibly me, they just saved the entire United States. The least I can do is..."

The phone beeped. "Ah good, Jeff? I'm speaking as Commander in Chief. No-one is to take any kind of offensive action against that thing. Pass the word down to every operational station. I know you had Auroras prepped for an attack window. Recall them if they've launched... Good. Give my best to May."

He pressed a couple of buttons, and spoke again. "Hello... Ambassador Wilson."

On screen, there was an inset as Stan Blather started telling the populace of America about the events at the UN. Video footage, carefully pixellated, was included.

"Yes, it's on TV right now." A few seconds passed. "A nice tackle. I didn't know you were a Running Back on your college team. Anyway, I want you to spread the word, especially to the Security Council. Until I say otherwise, those animals up there, the Rescue Rangers are under the protection of the United States of America. Diplomatic immunity, the works. With it's guns down, the fortress is no longer a threat. Nobody's going to get trigger happy. Right. You do that. Goodbye."

As he put down the mobile, he was hugged by his daughter. "I love you Daddy!"

&&&

Back on the fortress, the Rangers had gathered to decide what to do next.

"All we an do about that is hope no-one gets trigger happy...", said 'Ms' Gadget. "I made sure that laser was completely wrecked. Sorry, but I figured neutralising the threat was job one."

"Well, golly, no-one blames you for that!" The male Gadget stated. "But we can't just leave this thing up here, or even destroy it. It's full of Nimnul-tech, and from what I've seen she had help, and that means the Black Table may well have it, and other humans could reverse engineer it. So we can't just put the genie back in the box, we have to make sure it reaches responsible people. But where to land it? We'd do too much damage at the UN buildings."

Chip shook her head, "We can't land it anywhere. Some idiot is going to get all grabby wherever we go... Could this thing reach orbit?"

The two Gadget's and Sparkie looked at each other and nodded, and Sparkie spoke. "Uh, yes, if we're above the atmosphere. From the controls, the contra-gravity carpets are much more powerful."

Chip grinned. "Then we take it up and co-orbit it with the International Space Station. That's definitely international territory. And it's awkward enough to get to that no-one gets an exclusive peek. It should also keep it away from other crooks. I'm sure with all this stuff we can recondition the Ranger Orbiter and launch it out the airlock type door."

Del had been fiddling with the TV control panel, aided by Foxglove, who'd flown her over there. "Hey, everyone, I've managed to get a feed from a broadast satellite. I figure the news people must know Nimnul's been kicked out by now."

She flipped a switch, to hear and see Stan Blather, declaiming the news in Kronkite tones. "... Rescue Rangers have just been granted diplomatic immunity by the United States. An on-line poll shows President Logan's aproval rating has just jumped by 5 points. Footage of events on board Nimnul's battle fortress continues to come in, and a world breathes a sigh of relief at the ending of a menace to humanity, by these small all-American animal heroes, these chipmunk crusaders these Rescue Rangers!"

"Hey, I dis-resemble that bloomin' remark!", Maddy exclaimed. "Me place may be with you blokes, but me heart is in the Outback."

"I'm sure they'll correct that... seeing as how they're seeing everything we're doing right now!" Chip exclaimed. "But how... darn, that nut Nimnul said something about a voco-modulariser... it must be translating or something."

"Uh... I guess I flipped the switch the wrong way." said Sparkie.

The lady chipmunk sighed. "Well, it can't be helped. Let's set the flight controls..."

Girl Gadget had made a walkway of junk while they talked, and lowered it with a mechanical arm to provide a bridge to the main controls. She started examining things, and there was a worried expression on her face.

"Uh oh... "

"Guys we have bigger problems." She started dancing on the controls and schematics appeared on the screens. "There must have been some kind of trigger in that bracelet. The molecular regurgitator on the transporter has fused, I mean utterly wrecked. And the whole time it's been running a transport sequence. I think Nimnul didn't mean for it to act for this long, but his cut out failed. I've shut it down manually but it's already overloaded."

There were gasps from the other two engineering types. "The whole time?" Sparkie squeaked.

Seeing the other Rangers looking puzzled, Gadget explained. "The whole time it's been transporting in ionised matter, but without the molecular regurgitator, it can't rematerialise it. Given that it started when Nimnul transported, there's a lot of mass energy in the superposition buffers. It's already way overloaded. And given Planck's constant is invariant for a metric... I estimate 20 minutes before that energy erodes the continuum metric and the whole mass is restored as pure energy, in an instant."

"You mean like a nuclear bomb?" asked Speedie.

Gadget shook her head. "That would be a firecracker compared to the energy we're dealing with."

The other Gadget was looking at the readings. "10 gigatons, at least. Enough to turn the whole Eastern seaboard into a glowing crater! Not to mention the secondary effects..."

Chip asked grimly. "Could we find a way to destroy this place right now?"

Gadget shook her head. "It's too late. Destroying the transporter would release the energies. This could really be the end of the world as we know it!"

**Just when you thought it was all over bar the tickertape parades... Well, I had to up the ante somehow.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4 - Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Achievement**

There ware shocked looks all around, and silence.

Then Charlotte turned to look at Gadget, and said, "No it's not, because we're not going to let it happen!"

She glanced at the nearest camera viewpoint, and Gadget put her paw to her mouth.

"Oops! I guess that wasn't the most comforting thing to say on global TV."

"You think?", Charlotte said, and looked around. "Okay, we don't panic, we work the problem guys. We've been in worse scrapes, those Fleeblebroxians for one. They were going to blow up the whole planet, not just part of it. Sparkie, you said this thing could make orbit. Get us to the safest place you can in the time we have."

The lab rat nodded and she dashed on four paw drive across the makeshift bridge to the main control panel.

"Okay, can we repair the machine, stop the explosion?"

Both Gadgets thought, and started to say something. Then the male one gestured with a paw. Miss Gadget nodded and said, "Not exactly. I think we can build a replacement Molecular Regurgitator in the time we have… just, especially with parts from our mobile phone modemiser."

"I thought it was toast?" Del said.

The female Gadget shrugged, "Um… it was primarily the de-materialisation circuits that were wrecked, it still worked as a receiver…"

Charlotte nodded, "Okay, Maddy, get back to that store room and bring the phone here!"

"On it Chip-lass, I'll 'ave it back here in two shakes of a roo's tail." The big mouse slid down a cable onto the floor and headed off.

The male Gadget was thinking. "Gadget, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"I think so G2," she responded, unconsciously mirroring his posture. "If we recalibrate the dematerialisation circuits on the main transporter to cycle matter from the superposition buffer rather than the outside we may get an extra ten minutes."

"But we certainly won't have time to calibrate it. So we should be able to get most of the half ton of mass energy out of the superposition buffer, but the registration will be out of whack and there's going to be some imbalance… maybe a few grams… about a 50 kiloton explosion?"

The female Gadget nodded, "I think so. Nothing to worry about… unless you're within half a mile of this thing when it goes up… scratch that, it needs to be at least 20 miles, to allow for the gamma radiation to disperse."

"That's a problem… we won't be able to rig an automatic changeover, not with the system in it's current state. And even with the extra time the construction will be cut close. One of us has to stay behind and finish the job." The male Gadget sounded resigned.

Charlotte started to protest and Gadget waved her silent. "That'll be me. We rig a radio link to the orbiter, it should already have that transceiver that was rebuilt as a radio direction finder built in. When I'm ready, I start the re-materialisation cycle and let you know. Foxglove cancels the spell that holds me here, and I snap back to my own dimension with seconds to spare!"

Charlotte sighed with relief. "Sounds like a plan. Go to it! I'll get a team started on the orbiter."

The male Gadget turned and said, "Oh, and just focus on stripping off the old fire extinguishers, and collecting parts like some of Nimnul's oxygen spray inhalers. We need to do some extensive on it. It was never designed to reenter from so high, or at such a steep angle."

"We're on it! hen there's only one thing to say... Rescue Rangers Away!"

As the two Gadgets slid down a stretched out Del escape slide to the base of the matter transporter control panel, they all felt their weight increase. Sparkie came scampering back. "I'm afraid the anti-gravity system's damaged, the best I could give us was an additional 1 meter per second squared on the vertical axis, because the anti-gravity system's damaged. I also added some sideways vector to put us out over the Atlantic."

"We've got around 28 minutes, The Gadgets have figured out a fix to extend the time before the buffer overloads."

The lab rat lady nodded, "Good, That means we'll be over 1000 miles above ground when the explosion happens. That'll attenuate the explosion effect on the surface over 800 times, compared to our 25 mile starting height."

"Which means?" Chip asked.

Sparkie looked puzzled, "Means what?"

"Attenuating the 10 gigaton explosion 800 times. What are the effects?"

"Oh, you'd have to be at least 1000 miles up to do that." She looked across at the main control panel. "We should reach that easily. The flash will still be bright enough to blind anyone staring at it, and the EMP pulse will knock out a lot of Low Earth Orbit satellites. It may well blank out radio for days and interfere with electronics too. But it'll be above the Van Allen belt, so most of the charged particles will be diverted. The atmosphere will absorb enough energy to cause severe weather disturbances, but obviously you can't calculate those kinds of effects exactly. It won't be fun, but it won't be world wrecking either."

Chip sighed with relief. She said, "And if they manage to reduce the explosion to a 50 kiloton one?"

"But they could only do that by rematerialising matter from the superposition buffer…" Sparkie looked down at the activity around the open matter transporter access panel. Maddy had just arrived with the damaged mobile phone modemiser.

"Oh, they're building a replacement molecular regurgitator. That means they can rematerialise most of the matter, greatly reducing the size of the explosion. So Earth would get nothing more than a pretty light show, and some temporary static."

"So the earth is as safe as we can make it… Good!" Chip looked pleased.

The two Gadgets were already directing Del and Maddy in levering off the access panel, while Speedie and Foxglove were flying in electrical components from over the workshop. Foxglove had a glowing ball in front of him, some sort of divination spell that was leading him to what they wanted.

Tommy spoke up. "Uh… I don't want to seem selfish, but how are we going to get away before the explosion? We need to fix the orbiter too."

Chip nodded, blonde curls waving. "Yeah, that's next on my list. We really need Gadget… one of them I mean. We have… 26 minutes."

Del stretched up to catch the edge of the table, and pulled herself and Maddy up.

The Australian mousette spoke. "Gadget, our Gadget that is, gave us a list of parts for reconditioning the orbiter. He'll be up with Foxglove in a couple of minutes, once he's finalised that regurgitating widget design with the other Gadget."

Chip sighed, "Darn it, we owe her so much! Without her we'd never have gotten up here! And we don't even have time to thank her properly… Well, let's get the list and start pulling things together."

&&&

The world watched and waited as the Rangers went about their tasks, seemingly having forgotten the entire planet was looking over their shoulders. Under lady Gadget's speeding paws, and aided by Speedie the fly, a circuit board of incredible complexity was being constructed. A portable soldering iron, and a selection of other micro-tools from Nimnul's development of the mecha animals, were employed with skill and deftness.

The other Rangers, commanded by the other Gadget were putting together a simpler, but more massive project. Nimnuls automated machine tools and 'helping hand' waldos, along with Foxglove's levitation and Del's rubber band powers made making and moving the parts easy, but there were many to do, and not much time to do it.

A new battery pack had been fitted into the extended lower deck of the dustbin hull of the orbiter, along with the Gyro tank, rigged up for remote control from the control cabin. The main hull would rotate inside it's gyro ring, and provide attitude adjustment during re-entry. A number of oxygen inhalers from Nimnul's bathroom medicine cabinet had found their way inside the cabin itself.

The airlock chamber under the lid was in use for several things, firstly a hangar for the tied down Rangerwing. Above it, separated by a cardboard spacer, was a parachute made out of a sheet from the laundry cabin. Springs were under the spacer to eject it when a magnetic latch released.

The bottom of the dustbin had been bolted onto a shallow cone of sheet metal that extended beyond it's rim, originally a reflector for one of the workshop's room lights. Sprayed onto it was a coating of aerogel foam that Nimnul had developed to paint the exterior of her lab. She might be a psychotic mad scientist, but she'd been energy conscious, after the power company shut her off a couple of times.

At Gadget's direction they'd also foamed the work surfaces of the folding tables, and a larger dish from a discarded satellite system. The Rangers had thought they'd be able to make do with pushing the ship out the airlock and letting it fall, but male Gadget had quickly disabused them of that notion as they worked on the orbiter.

"Sorry guys, but we'll be going at over a mile per second upwards when we separate. If we launch 2 minutes before zero time, that will still put us 50 miles away when it blows, but we'll still be falling nearly 1000 miles through vacuum. We'll hit the atmosphere at over 3 miles a second, and we don't have the materials to build a rocket unit, or at least not one that can make tha kind of velocity change."

Tommy was up top, hauling in parachute shrouds. "What about those gravity grids, surely there must be spares?"

"There are, but we'd need too big a battery to carry inside, and complex control runs. No, I have a simpler idea. A simple balistic re-entry vehicle. With our current trajectory, it should land in East Africa." Male Gadget was at the control panel for the automated manufacturing cell, and he bounded back and forth across the controls, programming a production sequence at fantastic rate.

Charlotte was examining the list. "But, folding tables, a tilting vanity mirror? Aerogel foam, fire extinguishers, yes, I can understand, but some of this stuff… I don't see…"

A schematic appeared on the screen and she stopped as the design became clear. The four tables had pair of legs at each short end that folded in. The pairs of legs at one end of each were to be welded together to form a square set of pillars with internal bracing that would just allow the orbiter to slot inside. The satellite dish covered the square hole underneath.

With the tables folded up, the thing would be a tall square based pillar. Inside the pistons were set to extend the tables, and a set of fire extinguishers taped to the outside would act as thrusters. The vehicle would be driven out the airlock style sliding doors to Nimnul's lab by the air pressure, the fire extinguishers would neutralise any rotation, and the ship would fall away from the lab. The tilted mirror would be bolted outside the porthole in the side of the orbiter and used to look out the open end for attitude control.

It was designed to catch the outer edge of the mesosphere and aerobrake. The fire extinguishers would be fired about a minute before, not to slow them, but to reduce their acceleration before they hit atmosphere, at which point the tables would be unfolded and the fire extinguishers fall away. As the pressure increased, the pistons would be compressed, folding the outermost sections of the tables inwards and reducing the surface area. The whole would be like a shuttlecock, weight forward and self righting.

This would give a deceleration of between 12 and 15 gravities, fatal to a human for more than a few seconds, but not to smaller animals. Chip and Del had already proved that long ago on the G trainer at Cape Kanootie. If it worked. Once falling freely in atmosphere, they could pop the garbage can lid, and deploy the parachute which would pull them free of the re-entry section. If it looked like the landing site was a problem, they would get away in the Rangerwing.

With the aid of the automated manufacturing cell, construction took little more time than needed to describe it. The vessel was completed and the orbiter lowered into place 10 minutes before boom time.

Foxglove dropped from above, where he'd been watching the orbiter slip into place. "It looks like it's seated properly."

Del oozed out from underneath the base. "I hooked up the links to the servos, so the controls should work. This is gonna work great!"

Chip, Tommy and Maddy were already at the control panel with the guy Gadget. He grinned. "Then all we have to do is get it into the air lock and get insi…"

Suddenly the lights flickered and the feeling of the ground beneath them decreased it only lasted for a second, then the lights came back on.

"What's wrong?" exclaimed Chip. Gadget was already bounding along the control panels to the main controls, and the others followed. Speedie zoomed up from where she'd been helping Gadget, and added her query. "Why did we suddenly drop like that?"

When they got there, Gadget was already bringing up images on screen. "Golly, it's not good guys. The solar collector died when we got above the atmosphere, no air to form the lens, but that was okay, the accumulators had enough power for hours of flight. Unfortunately, when I blew the super-laser, debris damaged an exterior junction box. And now we're in the Van Allen belt it's failing intermittently, and when it does, everything loses power. I've tried switching it to a backup, but the control circuits are damaged too."

She focussed in on a part of the darkened underside, illuminated by the extended oval of a spotlight. The camera viewpoint had to be from a projection on the lower hull. The twisted stub of the super-laser mount extended out in the middle distance, and the far edge of the underside formed a horizon for the stars. The intervening hull was corrugated with nameless extrusions, boxes, panels and pipes. A number were clearly damaged, with holes or dis-colouration, and sparking going on inside.

"If the power goes out again…?" Chip was quick to prompt.

"If it goes out for more than 20 seconds, the matter transporter will explode. It has a small internal power reserve to allow it to complete normal transports safely, but extended use will drain it, and without power the superposition buffer will collapse."

The chipmunk girl in the fedora asked, "So what can we do?"

There's a manual switch here." Gadget replied, indicating a bit of hull with hazard striping. "I have to go out and switch it over by paw."

"But… even if you recondition the suit on the orbiter, there's no way you can get out, do it and get back before we launch. You won't even be able to keep up with the lab!"

Gadget shook his head. "We launch as soon as I've fixed up the suit. I'll set the lab to accelerate at a couple of centimeters a second, just enough for the other Gadget to keep things on the floor, when we go. It'll make it easier to transport the orbiter to the airlock anyway. I'll rig an MMU and stay outside the orbiter with a tether when we launch. We maneouvre under the lab, I go up and make the switch, and be back in a jiffy. We tell my other self when I'm done and she sets the lab back to full acceleration."

"But I should be the one…" Charlotte 'Chip' Maplewood looked into her beloved's eyes and saw love, but also the determination there. "Fine, but you'd better come back in one piece! I thought I'd lost you twice, and it almost killed me."

Gadget hugged her close, his tail wrapping possessively around her. "Golly Chip… I'll always be there for you."

He released her and sniffled slightly before starting to issue requests. "Okay, we need my old suit, the crossbow plunger from the Rangerwing, three O2 inhalers, a dessicant packet and servo-motor from inside one of the wrecked machines, a safety pin, and a lot of duct tape…"

The lights flickered and the weight dropped for another brief period.

"…And fast!"

Sparkie added, "I can set the acceleration and door controls."

Chip interjected, "We should really have an exterior camera tracking us, if you can?"

The lady lab rat grinned, "Easy as integrating a fourth order derivative!"

Speedie spoke up as well. "And I'll tell Miss Gadget our change in plans."

&&&

The main screen and the panel that controlled the gravity grids were in line of site from the female Gadget's workplace by the open matter transporter panel. She couldn't help but look up for a second as her weight dropped. A few seconds later the outer airlock opened and the Ranger spaceship tumbled out, propelled by the air that came with it. It spun away slowly, seeming to drop as the lab inched ahead. The digital countdown in one corner, thoughtfully set up by Sparkie during her programming, showed 9 minutes left.

Suddenly jets of gas spurted from the CO2 extinguishers on the exterior, slowing the tumble, and leaving the open end pointed back and upwards at the underside of the lab hull. The viewpoint shifted to another camera, and she nodded approvingly as the ship jetted slowly forward, turning on it's Gyrotank 'flywheel' to first reverse attitude and then point up as the jets slowed it. Probably Chip's work, if she was anything like the original.

A copper line, courtesy of servo-motor windings, shot out from inside the nested re-entry panels, carried by a plunger crossbow bolt with a magnet replacing the plunger, also courtesy of the servo motor. A figure started scaling it, attached to it by a safety pin and a chain of paper clips. It was a glove and jam-jar space suit with a certain intrepid mouse inside. Twin O2 inhalers were duct taped to the backs of his legs, and he was simply sitting and riding up on the twin jets.

The free 'finger' of the glove clearly carried the third one inside, because when the male Gadget reached up and pushed it, a stream of air ruffled his head fur. He glanced at the wrist watch head mounted inside and to one side of the helmet. It had been the Black Table guys, and had been left behind with all his other personal effects. Eight minutes thirty seconds… not much time at all.

Inside the station, Gadget had long since stopped watching and gone back to her work, paws flying over the complex lash-up she'd wired around the exposed boards of the mobile modemiser and the main transporter. However, the world media was following the progress of the space suit too. Inside the main lab, Gadget could hear Stan Blather living up to his name as he gave a detailed commentary on the EVA.

"Now we see Gadget Hackwrench is ascending the line using his thruster pack. This is crucial in the attempt to ensure that the ailing battle station retains a stable power supply, which in turn is needed to prevent the matter transporter exploding prematurely. Rather than using the time to escape, he, and the rest of the Rangers are selflessly working to protect us. I'm sure all our hopes and our prayers are with them.

"A repeat of the latest information from the Centre for Disaster Control. The worst case explosion will not directly affect Earth. However, people in the western hemisphere are warned against looking up at the sky, as the explosion will be ten times brighter than the mid-day sun. The electromagnetic pulse may affect unshielded electronics, so stay in your homes, or stop your car and pull over carefully. There is plenty of time, several minutes… All airplanes have been grounded or are landing if they can, and those that can't, are detouring to get as far away from the epicentre as possible."

"We can only hope that these precautions are not necessary. The smaller explosion created if the Rescue Ranger's bold plan succeeds will not cause disruptions except in a few nearby satellites, and those only temporary..."

Gadget tuned him out and focussed on her work. The counter set on the main screen, showed only 6 minutes left. Her paws flew over the complex lash-up created from the mobile phone modemiser and various hijacked circuits. The lights dimmed again, and the slight feeling of weight disappeared completely as the station suffered another brown-out, this one lasting several seconds. They stretched out endlessly as she waited for the power to return, but she simply took the opportunity to wipe her forehead with the back of her paw, and carried on when the lights, and weight came back on.

"Golly! That was too close."

&&&

The other Gadget had stuck the end of his chain of paperclips and safety pins to the magnet that held the tether to the hull. Under the low gravity conditions the magnetic force on the metal paperclip would be enough to hold him there. It was lucky the underside of Noreen Nimnul's workshop was built on steel girders and not coated with aerogel insulator the way the geodesic dome was, or hooking there magnetically wouldn't have been an option.

The 'waist' of the glove based spacesuit had a belt with loops, made from duct tape, and several pieces of equipment were pushed into them. He retrieved the flat headed screwdriver that ha once been used on the Spaceplane, and addressed the access hatch in front of him. It was flush with the underside, with the hinge opposite where he'd hooked on, exactly according to plan. There had been no time to give the suit itself gloves, or even mittens, so he couldn't simply flip open the panel directly. Instead, he jammed the screwdriver into the latch, bracing himself against a projection behind him, and heaved.

Fortunately, the access hatch hadn't been greased, or subject to vacuum long enough to weld itself shut, so after some resistance, it flipped open. The sudden release of pressure was unexpected, and the reaction force against the screwdriver also pulled Gadget free. He slid down the tether several feet before stowing the screwdriver and using his inhaler thrusters to stop himself. Holding the tether between arm and body held him in place as he pressed on the glove finger that held the air supply inhaler, refreshing the oxygen in his helmet, and evaporating the mist that was forming on it. The dessicator packet stuck to the glass behind his head could only absorb moisture so fast.

He examined the interior of the recessed switch housing and spotted a problem. It was a fairly standard handle style switch, common to power installations, but it was currently flipped away from him. This put it beyond his reach even at the greatest extent of his paperclip chain, and with no way to brace himself to pull, it was impractical anyway. His only option was to unhook from the tether and free fly across to the far side of the housing, where he could work on it. He had his thrusters for manouvring, but a mistake could leave him falling away or spinning randomly, and the time it would take to recover could doom him and the Orbiter.

He pushed off against the same projection that he'd used for bracing earlier and dived across the recess like a slow motion trapeze artist. He dropped away from the recess as he flew, and tucked up to spin himself around, using his leg thrusters. He rebounded off the open access panel and onto the switch itself, sitting, once again, like a trapeze artist. Then he braced the screwdriver into the inner edge of the recess and heaved, heedless of the fog forming on the inside of his helmet.

He felt the switch shift underneath him… more… more… Clunk! While there was no noise in the vacuum of space, he could feel the switch flipping over from the vibration through his body. He slipped off and dropped away, not bothering to wait for his helmet to clear and swing back to the line. There was no time… well six minutes, barely enough to reach minimum safe distance. He trusted that Chip, who was piloting, would move the ship to catch him.

&&&

Gadget suddenly heard a voice from the human headset, sitting by her, Tommy's, it sounded like. "Miss Gadget, could you start the lab accelerating again? Over."

"Roger Willberry! Out." She carefully brought herself to her knees, mindful of the ultra-low gravity, then aimed and bounded, making the journey to the main screen in one jump, rebounding off to land on the control panel. Quickly she triggered the preset sequence, and her weight increased to normal and a bit beyond. The timer showed 4 minutes, barely enough time…

She tweaked the controls and added some lateral component. It might damage the gravity grid system, but not significantly in the moments they had left. The screen was still centered on the shape of the Orbiter, now appearing to fly away from her at great speed. In fact, it was now simply falling, and she was the one flying away. She bounded back across to the matter transporter, using the removed access panel as a slide to get back to her workstation.

"… Come in Miss Gadget…" She could hear from the headphones.

"I'm here. Did you get your Gadget back? Over." She made a couple of last adjustments to the mechanism as she spoke.

"He's still getting unsuited. How are things at your end? Over."

.

"I'll be done in a jiffy… there!" She smiled brightly, examining her work. "Okay, I can switch this replacement molecular regurgitator into the transporter circuits with a single switch."

"Then why don't you?… I'm sorry, over."

Gadget shook her head, ignoring the fact that the other Rangers were about the only ones who couldn't see it.

"I'm afraid it will require disconnecting the dematerialisation cycle too. The rematerialisation process will start as soon as I do. The matter will be reconstituted in about 6 seconds, then the residual energy will blow it up. I'm waiting until the last possible moment to make sure it's as far away as possible from you when that happens. Over."

Chip's, that is Charlotte's voice came over the headset. "If it looks like you have to do it early, don't worry about us. Over."

Gadget sighed, "… Okay, but I'm monitoring the Superposition buffer and it's holding so far. We have about two minutes. When I engage the switch, I will count seconds. On the three, have Foxglove send me back. That way I can double check things are starting up okay. Over."

"Two minutes…" The Rescue Ranger leader's voice was wistful as it came over the headset. "Just enough time for us to say thank you. Without you, our transporter would have been useless, and we'd never have had a chance to get Nimnul."

"Golly, it's what any mouse with a mind bashingly high IQ would have done. I'm glad I could help, after all that's what we Rescue Rangers do."

"Too roight lass, but you were the only one able to help _us_." Maddy was taking her turn. "I hope you have a bonzer life back where you came from."

"Yeah, thanks a lot!" added Della's voice. "Give your Chip a big sloppy kiss from me!"

"DEL!" yelled Charlotte.

"This whole world owes you more than it can ever repay…" stated Foxglove. "… I'll try and contact you, let you know how things went, but dimensional stuff is tricky at the best of times."

"I wish we'd had more time to explore the variations between our two universes. The idea is most intriguing." said the male Gadget. "Maybe I can invent a way to do so… hmmm…"

"Uh uh…. Theorise later, goodbyes now." Chip said, "That and a kiss, darling." There was a short silence.

"Umm… I think Gadget would have added his thanks for breaking Nimnul's mind control, if Chip wasn't exploring his tonsils at the moment. I certainly add my thanks for rescuing me, and I know Gadget would too." Sparkie added her piece.

"And I would have loved to take you to the Acorn Club for a romantic dinner for two… if you didn't have your Chip and were going back to an alternate universe." Tommy sighed, "Why are all the good ones taken, or from another dimension, or both. Farewell."

The others added their goodbyes and the clock ticked down. At thirty seconds, Gadget noticed a slight rise in the energy flow through the capacitor matrix. "Okay guys, goodbye and good luck! I'm going to start the changeover in a few seconds. I suggest you turn the ship to put the heat shield between us…"

"Already done!" came Chip's voice.

"Okay then…" Gadget grabbed the switch. "Counting down… three… two… one… SWITCH!… one… it's working!… two… thre…"

She sat up sharply in the dimness. Her brain was still processing the image of the transporter platform wrapped in a polychromatic glow as the rematerialisation started. It took several seconds for her to adjust, and several more for her eyes to adapt to the darkness. Moonlight shone through the window of her room in the Treehouse. Everything looked the same as it had been when she went to sleep.

Her shoulders slumped slightly, had it all been just a vivid dream? Then she noticed the chill. She realised she was sitting on top of her covers and her nightgown. She gave an embarrassed little squeak, then realised no-one could see her anyway, and got up to put the dressing gown back on. The moonlight showed her bedclothes, while rumpled, were not thrown back. Somehow she'd been moved from under the sheets to on top of them, and the same for her nightclothes.

"Ohmigosh! It really happened!" Clearly, when she'd jumped back, the borrowed jumpsuit had stayed, and her dressing gown had snapped back with her, but not onto her. She wondered as she got back into bed, had her construction been correct? It had appeared to be operating with no problems, but obviously she hadn't been around to see the finish. She hoped the explosion had been small enough not to harm anyone, especially the other Rangers, and that their improvised re-entry vehicle operated with no problems.

'Foxglove said he'd try and contact me, but how?' she thought to herself, then sighed. 'I guess I'll never know how things turned out.'

After getting re-attired, she got back into bed and pulled her covers over herself. She expected to have to force herself, but she found she was very tired, and quickly dropped off to sleep.

She wasn't exactly dreaming… just vaguely aware, when a deep voice insinuated itself into her consciousness. It was Foxglove, the Foxglove of the world she'd just left that is…

'Gadget… Gadget… can you hear me?'

She was now fully aware, but her dream state was a blank slate, not even a void. 'I can hear you… Foxglove?'

'Yes!… I'm sorry, I've been trying this spell every night… it's good to finally contact you.'

'But it's only been a few minutes… oh, of course, our continua must be asynchronous, how silly of me...'

'Well the time that passes varies if that's what you mean. As long as I don't try to talk to you before a previous talk, I can pretty much target any time.'

'That makes sense, I guess otherwise you'd violate causality.'

'It gives me a blinding headache, I know that. I was hoping to get you the same night, for us it's been almost a month.'

"Well you certainly got that much right, I only just back to sleep. So you are all okay?'

'Better than okay! We couldn't actually see the explosion, but cameras on the ground caught it. Caused some static, and that's about it. We spun the ship, fired the CO2 thrusters at the right time and deployed the 'feathers'. It wasn't fun, I think we hit 13 G's at peak, but we made it. Del splodged herself out and acted as a bunch of acceleration couches.

'But the interesting stuff happened when we splashed down, we ended up off the shore of East Africa. We were going to deploy the Rangerwing and head for land, but within a couple of minutes, a Royal Navy search and rescue chopper was overhead. They picked us up, orbiter and all, and transported us to their aircraft carrier.'

Gadget was puzzled, 'How is that good?'

'Because they were treating us with kid gloves. We got Royal Marines in full dress uniform lining up on deck, a plush state room, the kitchen staff waiting on us hand and foot, and then a Harrier jump jet to the Azores where we hopped a US Airforce transonic courier to Washington. I mean, I've occasionally got a bit of hero worship in my role as the Masked Bat, but this was something else. Everyone we met wanted to ask us about all our past adventures...'

'How did they know? And how could they understand you?' Gadget was intrigued.

'Well, as for the how, some months ago, when we got the new computer at the Treehouse, Del managed to argue Chip into scanning in all her old case files. Gadget build a scanner from a fingerprint detector... all good. But Gadget, while under Nimnul's control got a copy, and the Black Table got a copy from her, and it was tagged with their highest security level...'

'Uh oh... so it went out with the rest of the files when Del hacked the system.'

'Exactly. The Black Table bases got dropped on from a great height by UN peacekeepers and the International Police before we even landed. Their leaders are in jail, and their catspaws are talking, spilling their guts actually.'

'Speaking of talking, did Gadget... Golly, that's still really weird to say, rig up some sort of replacement translator?'

'Oh, yes, you couldn't know. Most of the people who were watching that broadcast can understand us now, even though Nimnul's machines were destroyed. Gadget and Sparkie have some double dome explanation about mental barriers, social framing and memetic contagion. At that point, I kind of checked out. Give me a nice simple grimoire any day. I think it comes down to, humans have this mental block against tapping into the common understanding we animals share. Maybe it's evolution, maybe just learned.

'Anyway, Nimnul's device didn't just let them understand us, it punched holes in that wall until it looked like cheesecloth, and all kinds of interesting things are leaking through. It's not just with us, an ever increasing number of humans are becoming full blown Speakers. The whole world's going mad, but in a good way.

'We were personally congratulated by the president, the whole first family. I thought Chip was going to faint from the force of her blush when she met up with Tress again. And it wasn't just the president, we were presented at the UN, Buckingham palace, the Hague. We ended up with more medals, honours and awards than even Maddy could carry, even though they'd usually cast reduced scale ones. And the media attention… it was complete zoo!'

'Golly! So what are you doing now? I mean in general, specifically for each of you of course, but in general as far as the various tasks you're doing. It sounds like you've been busy.'

'Is that ever an understatement! When Chip was recuperating at the White House, she joked about setting national policy from her hamster wheel. Well now it's true, the setting policy bit, I mean. The president personally asked for her help in understanding the implications of intelligent animals. The laws, everything needs to be reworked from the ground up.

On the other hand, Gadget is leading a team of scientists and techies, both human and animal to reduce Nimnul tech and Black Table tech to practical applications. There's Sparkie, of course, and creatures from Thorn Valley, London Under even Watership Down. Devices like the gigantico ray and metamorphasiser are suggesting new ways for waste disposal and food production… the ati gravity gear was reverse engineered from a Black Table prototype, and Gadget also figured out the bugs in Nimnul's power generator design...'

'Oh yes, the Quantum Electron Cascade Generator. We're fitting one to the Sea Ranger, or new submarine. I'd have talked about it with my counterpart, but we never really had the time.'

There was a smirk behind Foxglove's words. 'I should have guessed.

'So where was I? Oh yes, both Chip and Gadget are pulling down 14 hour days and loving every minute of it! Del and I are covering the hero work part of things, along with Maddy and Speedie. Only now we have a much better relationship with the police. Speaking of which, Sergeant Spinelli appeared at our tree to apologise to Maddy for chasing her off so many times. Tommy helps too, but he's doing a lot of public appearance stuff.'

'It sounds amazing. I'd love to see it...'

'Maybe you can, but not soon. I was lucky to have the right conditions for that first transport. But it will take some time, real time in both dimensions before I could try again. I'll contact you... oh dear, my link's weakening... I wanted to tell you about the statue...'

'Statue?'

'A group shot, including you, 50 feet high, where the old Treehouse was...'

The voice faded, and Gadget drifted off into a deeper sleep, still with one question. What would the plaque read?

**The End**


End file.
